Last week, SOMEBODY (*my oldest son*) dropped off this little scrawny gray kitten at our house (the kitten was dumped at his house first). I came home to find a full bowl of catfood and a full plastic container of water on the porch table, and this little bony kitten was running around, tormenting the big dogs.

HE.NEVER.SHUTS.UP.  Seriously.   NEVER.  It’s 24/7, “Meow! Meow! MEOWWWW!”  We couldn’t call him “Meow” because that seemed silly, so we changed it to mimic his incessant caterwauling: “Mao!  Mao!  MAO!!!”

He also never backs down from anything. Puppers wants to play rough? Nose swats in rapid ninja fashion are doled out.  DG wants to eat him for standing in her food bowl?  He’s hissing and standing on his hind legs to show her how awesomely fierce he is.  The pigs are full of curiosity over this newest farm member, and he’s not scared of them at all.  I honestly expect to look out and see him riding Bitsy, battle pig style, like Dan Ironfoot ( the fifth King Under the Mountain from The Lord of the Rings for the uninitiated).

His name came easily. For a skeleton of a cat, he wouldn’t touch the bowl of cat food. I wound up feeding him an entire can of tuna from the pantry just to get him to eat something! That is where we got the “picky” part of the name.

Hence, we now have this crazy loud kitten named Picky Mao.