Easóg

Easóg is the Irish word for stoat and also the name of my cat. There are a couple layers to this name. The first is simply I find it funny to call animals by the wrong species and I have a fondness for the Irish language. The second is she is a thin, white thing and I think sometimes she somewhat resembles a stoat in its winter coat (though stoats in Ireland don’t actually have winter coats).

The final layer to this comes from the medieval Irish law, commonly known as Brehon law, or at least a little titbit about it in a book I read by Niall Mac Coitir titled Ireland’s Animals: Myths, Legends and Folklore, which says that for the purposes of determining legal penalties by offences commitid by a pet, a stoat was legally considered to be a type of cat. I sometimes amuse myself thinking about some exasperated judge who had to decide the original precedent about how to calculate damages when someone’s stoat killed a chicken.

I adopted her when she was, I was told, about eleven months old, though I never got a birthday for her. She’s a very timid creature and the morning after the first night I brought her home I couldn’t find her. I searched my flat top to bottom but she was nowhere to be seen. I was worried that she had somehow gotten out but suspected that she had found a hiding spot in the space under and behind the kitchen cabinets. I did have a look around outside and put up a few posters with my number on it in case anyone spotted her, but inside I left out food for her, sprinkled flour around it so that I could see any footprints she left if she went for it, and set up a webcam with some software to automatically capture video if it detected motion. Here is the first video captured of her.

This worked but sadly it was the only way that I saw her for three weeks. She would hide during the day when I was around and only come out at night to eat, use the litter tray that I had left out, and slowly start to explore her new home. There was no real way of getting to her hiding spot without dismantling the kitchen and that would have terrified her more anyway. Eventually she started to venture out when I was around and would explore other parts of the flat during the day (I left the doors open for her) but would keep her distance and flee back to her hole if I motioned towards her or even moved very quickly or made any noise at all.

Once she was tolerating my (distant) presence more I decided to try and make myself as unthreatening as possible. When she stepped out into the hallway I lay on the floor of the living room and waited for her to come back. When she did she very, very slowly and very, very carefully stalked up ot me then sniffed my hand before running away. Then she slowly came up again and sniffed my hair and ran away. I continued to lay still to not scare her but she very visibly relaxed at this point. She had been deathly silent in those weeks but now started to meow and take some experimental swipes at a mouse toy that I had left on the floor and rubbing her head against the furniture.

She left the room again and I decided to sit up with my legs crossed and wait for her again. When she came back again she sniffed at my hand and experimentally rubbed up against me before running off a short distance. When she came back to me it was like a switch had been flipped. She started rubbing up against me in earnest while purring loudly before headbutting my hand affectionately and licking the hell out of me as I pet her. When I eventually moved over to my desk she jumped up in my lap and settled in. My clothes were absolutely covered in white hair that evening.

To this day she is extremely affectionate (and vocal) and while she is still quite timid and doesn’t like sudden noises or movements she has gotten much more used to people.

I do spoil her a bit, though.

Also a friend pointed out to me that the character I made in Sonic Forces several years before adopting Easóg, who I called Blitz, is also a white cat with yellow eyes. Perhaps they are sisters.

The rest is just a photo dump.