Furry Friday

I decided to add a new feature to my blog called Furry Friday. Each Friday I'm going to post a picture of one or both of our furry family members. The idea came partly from my favorite non-fiction book, "The Daily Coyote" by Shreve Stockton. Shreve moves to middle-of-nowhere Wyoming and ends up adopting a coyote puppy, whom she posted pictures of every day on her website, "The Daily Coyote."


So today I'm introducing you to Conan and Lily. We got Conan at 11 months old when we were living in Florida. He came with the name Conan and, since it's a bit odd, we initially planned to change it. But then we realized that all the pop-culture references for the name Conan fit our dog's personality -- Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer and Conan O'Brien. (I think he was originally named after the latter Conan because his fur is a pretty close match to Conan O'Brien's hair.) Conan has been our furry child for almost four years now and we love him to pieces and spoil him far more than we will spoil any future human children.

We really wanted another boxer sibling for Conan, but our yard is pretty small and just the thought of air travel with two huge dogs when we move from Hawaii in 2012 gave me a headache. So last July we adopted Lily in the hope that she would become a companion for Conan. Her parents are feral cats and she and her littermates were rescued when they were about 2 months old. She's quite a handful and she is the subject of many glares, shoos, water bottle squirts and yelling fits (complete with hand gestures). But she has grown to be best buds with Conan and we're hoping that she'll settle down as she ages. (She just turned 1 in May.)

Incidentally, Lily's name was also inspired by a book. I really wanted to name her Artemis because her coloring and gray-green eyes reminded me of the moon, and I was reading one of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians novels at the time. Artemis is the Greek goddess of the moon and the hunt and I thought the name was fitting. But nobody else liked it, so we went with my second suggestion of Lily. I had recently finished "The Secret Life of Bees" (a fantastic book) and the protagonist in that book is named Lily. Unfortunately, as she's gotten older it seems like Lily really doesn't fit her. We should have stuck with the name the 10 Lives rescue gave her -- Miss Chiff!