How Indigo Got His Name

My cats were given names by their previous owner which I never really liked, but it took me a while to come up with new ones. A certain event gave Indigo his name.

Many years ago, when my cats were only four years old, our household (two humans, five cats) moved to a new apartment, in a part of town where we thought it might be safe to let the cats go outside. We discovered our mistake when one of them dragged himself back to the house with an injured hind leg.

The vet said it was dislocated, and that he had been hit by a car. (In fact, if it was a car, he was so incredibly lucky not to have been more seriously injured that I sometimes wonder if it was something else.) Anyway, he came back from the animal hospital with two big pins holding his leg together. Plus all the fur had been shaved off, so it looked like a chicken leg. It was so very upsetting.

There was an open wound on the leg as well. As the wound healed, the new skin grew back in this amazing dark blue color. I've never heard of such a thing, but the cat was renamed Indigo in honor of his healing process.

However, I couldn't change his name until his brother also got a new name (that wouldn't be fair.) After deep thought, it occurred to me that his brother was a plump pear-shaped beast, very much like one of those dark green Avocadoes. Thus the new names were bestowed.