Tycho is a mostly white cat with a grey toupée, and
he was born approximately April 1, 2004. A woman I don't
know, named Crystal, adopted him from a humane society
shelter in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota,
USA. His life before this point is unknown to me. Crystal
named him Monet, and had him a short time before deciding
this cat was too much of a handful. For reasons I can only
attempt to guess, she took him to the apartment of her
ex-boyfriend, Jim, and asked him to take care of Monet. In
just a few days, Jim was unwilling to continue caring for
him as well. I happened to have been working on a campaign
website for Jim, and he asked what he should do with the
cat. My cat Zero had recently run away, and Lidja was
depressed, so I wanted another cat, but could not afford to
buy or vet one. I told Jim if he would take Monet to get
neutered and vaxed, I would take the cat. I warned him not
to declaw under any circumstances. He agreed, and a few
days later, in November 2004, I received a vaxed, neutered,
clawed cat I'd never seen before.
I hated the name Monet, and remarked to a friend that
if I were to name a cat after someone famous, I'd pick
someone with a much cooler name, like Tycho Brahe, and that
is how Tycho got his name. I like to say he is
simultaneously named after the mathematician, the Penny
Arcade character, and the
Return of the Jedi
starfighter pilot Tycho Celchu. Because
Tycho is a
Latinization of the Danish name
Tyge, I pronounced
it as it would be in Latin:
Tee-ko. Many people
mispronounced it
Tie-ko even after I just said it
Tee-ko. It's really annoying when people do that.
Anyway, now that I live in Denmark, everyone says it the
Danish way, where the
y is said like a German
ü. I've decided not to fight it. The cat doesn't
know the difference anyway. (FYI, the way Americans
pronounce
Brahe bears practically no resemblance
at all to the way the Danes say it.)
When he came to me, he had been eating Whiskas pouches. He
required no transition to new foods, as he will eat
anything you put in front of him if it doesn't smell
poisonous. His favorite food is whatever I've given Lidja,
even if it's the same thing I gave him.
