Phillip, the world. The world, Phillip.

This is our new cat, Phillip.

The story goes that Amanda and her brothers all got cats about 12 years ago or so. Her brother Matthew got a very young cat. So young, in fact, that it was too early to even know the sex of the cat. When asked "What's the name of the cat going to be?", Matthew responded with "Phillip." The inherent maleness of the name led to the logical follow-up question "Well, what if it's a girl?"

"It's name ... is Phillip."

And so it was. And is. And over the last twelve years, Phillip the female cat has earned a few nicknames: Phip, Phlip, Pip, etc. All of which feel nicely reminiscent of the Philly Phanatic to me.

Anyway, this is the first photo of Pip. I thought we'd share her with you (Ry, my only blog reader other than Amanda).

So far, Pip has spent a good hefty chunk of the last three days hiding under the couch in our office. She's a bit freaked out by the traumatic change in scenery. She had been living mostly as an outdoor cat for the last two years after being on the losing end of a housing dispute with Amanda's mom's dog The Goose. Being that The Goose is part lab/mastiff/pit bull, Phip ended up living in the garage.

At first, I was worried that she'd not be able to adjust to being back inside. I had heard somewhere that once a cat becomes an outdoor cat, they can't go back to being an indoor cat. Not so with Phip. She apparently never really warmed up to the idea of the great wide open.

Three days into the great narrow enclosed and she's really starting to come around. She's out from under the couch, anyway. If she does anything rad, I'll try and snap some more pictures.

And here I thought I was a dog person ...