On Monday, October 22, I pulled a six week old Siamese kitten out of the engine of a new Ford F350 pickup truck at the job site where I was working.  The driver of this truck did not want this kitten, and she said that she lived next door to a bar where there were a lot of stray kittens.

At the time, I was sure that this kitten was going to scratch and bite me, struggle and get away from me, so I put it on the front seat of my Jeep Cherokee and I shut the door.  I didn’t want it to get loose on the job site, because it was dangerous, it would get run over, and there were several packs of coyotes that lived close to this job site, they came through every night and they would eat this six week old kitten.

I realized that this kitten hadn’t tried to scratch or bite me, or tried to get away.  It sat calmly in the driver’s seat where I put it, and later it went and sat on the center console.  When I got off work and was driving back to Dickinson where I live, about half way through this more than one hour drive, this kitten climbed up the sleeve of my sweatshirt and it sat on my shoulder, looking out the window for the rest of the drive home.

I had to stop at the Family Dollar store to buy cat litter, a litter box, cat food, and cat food bowls.  I had gotten a cardboard box out of the dumpster at the job site before I left, and I carried this kitten up to my apartment in this cardboard box.  I put this kitten in the bathroom with the litter box, some water, and some cat food.  When I checked on it an hour later, it had eaten its food, drank some water, and it had pooped in the litter box.

I left the bathroom door open, and the kitten walked out to the living room and it did a little bit of exploring. Then it climbed up the lazy boy chair where I was sitting, and onto my shoulder where it sat for a while purring, then it climbed to the top of the back of the chair and went to sleep.

Early in the morning, about an hour before I had to wake up to go to work, the kitten came into the bedroom where I was sleeping, and it lay on top of my head on the pillows behind my head.  In order to turn over, I had to give up my pillows to the cat.

When I was driving to work that morning, and when I was at work that day, I was thinking that I wanted to keep this kitten, that it would be good company.  It seemed to be a particularly good and well behaved cat.  It didn’t try to scratch or bite me, get away from me, panic and go crazy in the car, or run around my apartment getting into everything.  And it was a big relief that it didn’t hesitate to go use the litter box several times, rather than pee or poop on the floor.

I was thinking about what to name this cat, it appeared to be a male.  I didn’t want to stick it with some stupid name, that would adversely affect its personality and the way people treated it.  I thought about what qualities and characteristics this cat had, and a fitting name based on these things.  After several hours, I decided to name it after Dan Porter.

Dan Porter, for those of you who don’t know, owns a Toyota/Honda car dealership in Dickinson, North Dakota, and he has financially supported many community projects and charity events.

So I decided to name this cat Dan Porter, but in order to not confuse this cat by using two names, I would have to say it as one word, Danporter.  For example, “Danporter leave that electrical cord alone!”

Now, when I took this cat to the veterinarian to get shots, I would tell them that the name of this cat was Dan Porter, and that he was a Methodist.  That way, he would get more respect and better medical treatment, because they would think that he was somehow related to Dan Porter, and I wouldn’t tell them anything different.

But once I got home from work on Tuesday, this cat acted very, very bad climbing up my back many times while I was eating, and later scratching and biting me when I was already mad at it and trying to sleep.  So I don’t know what I am going to name this cat now, because this doesn’t act like Dan Porter.