Off the Mark by Mark Parisi for May 02, 2022

Took me an extra look to get it.

And, her name is Repunzel.

When I was 6, my family moved across town but our two cats (Jack and Jill) didn’t make the trip. My sister and I were told that it was because they didn’t want to move (but I always assumed that it was because my Dad didn’t like pets). That fall, on the first day of school, a cat followed me home (seriously, I didn’t carry her, I heard her meowing in a tree and climbed up at got her out) and my Mom said I could keep her. My Mom’s rule about naming pets was that it had to be the name of a person, historical or fictional, and we had to have a reason. I think her rule was because she wanted to make sure we realized that pets were not objects and by giving them ‘people’ names, we would treat them with appropriate care and respect. I named her Rapunzel — not because she had long hair (she was a short-haired tortie), but because I climbed the tree to rescue her. This was in the ‘50s, before anesthetics were safe for cats (and other small animals), and she had quite a few batches of kittens over the next few years — always in the furnace room in the basement. We would listen at the floor register for the mews and count. When the kittens were a few days old, Rapunzel would bring them upstairs and we would spend hours deciding proper names for them. We gave them all away — we lived in a farming community and we could always find good homes. And we continued to rescue cats — people would dump them on our porch or give Mom a call about some extra kittens. Or someone would pull a sack out of the river. . . Rapunzel would raise them as her own. Dad never did become a cat person (he called every cat by the same name — ’that dam cat’ ), but he accepted the inevitable.

Ohhhhhh!! Rapunzel reference??

Her name is Repunzel….what else…lol

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, cough up your hairball!

The prospective owner appears to be one of the hairless varieties.

Ratpunzil?

I don’t know—the joke’s a bit of a let-down, though I guess it’s also high-concept.

Love it! Thanks for the laugh. Great way to start a day.

You need a cat named Repunzel.

Catpunzel.