She reminds me somewhat of Boots from my childhood; who weighed about six pounds but was fully in charge of the household, which included humans, other cats, and a somewhat short tempered boxer dog. But nobody argued with Boots. There was nothing mean about her – but she was the one in charge.
Boots lived to be somewhere in her 20’s, though we never found out exactly how old she was. May Maeve do likewise.
Such a beautiful bit of knowledge! Thank you for sharing this.
Sometimes I try to avoid using the word cellar. I generally substitute with basement but cellar just rolls off my tongue since it’s been something I’ve used since I was a child.
I am going to share this with some friends and family!
Another day and another pot of coffee brings old memories trickling back…
The friends who named the farm cats who adopted them Butterfoot & Cellar Door were Roy & Cé Bongartz - he was a longtime contributor to The New Yorker and very playful wordsmith, and quite likely aware of linguistic qualities attributed to ‘cellar door’ that were lost on 6 year old me. During a visit to our house he remarked upon the name I had chosen for my first cat - Softly - marveling that he had not heard of a pet with an adverb for a name before. Family legend has it that a paragraph or two about these cat names ended up in a column or article in The New Yorker, but Roy is long gone, and I’ve never been able to find it.
The capabilities of online search grow by leaps and bounds - mayhap 'tis time to try again. But the family backstory was never published…that is, until now. I had forgotten it for decades, and will likely forget it again in not too many more, but we must hope and trust that the Straight Dope will carry our knowledge on long into a bright, prosperous, and (of course) less ignorant future.