Surprise!

When we arrived in Congo, two MAF families here had recently been blessed with litters of kittens. As soon as they were old enough, we acquired one female from each litter, hoping they would become good mousers and buggers. (Is "buggers" even a word? How about "roachers?") We named them Lydia and Fiddlesticks, Liddie and Fiddle for-short. Well, Liddie rapidly learned to catch roaches, earning her lots of brownie points in my book, since I detest them so much. We'll just say Fiddle has other endearing qualities. I happened to glance up as Liddie was walking away from me the other day and I noticed she did not look quite right. Liddie, we discovered, is a boy cat. So, now I have a boy and a girl, both rapidly approaching sexual maturity, and I am thinking I need to find a vet AND FAST. Emily and I decided this morning that calling him Lydia just won't do, and unless the rest of the family votes it down, we want to rename him "Elliot". We thought about naming him Merlin, since he tricked all of us, but he really does look more like an Elliot. This will take some getting used to. We all keep calling him a her out of habit. Poor guy. Here are some photos. The little calico on the bottom is Fiddle. The one on top with stripes is Liddie, I mean Elliot.