Lepton & Quark (thanks to Oxford University for the "sign"! ;)

Note: I wrote this whole thing on 8/11, nearly a month ago. Why didn't I post it then? Because I wanted... "needed" to include photos. ha ha ha. Here it is, finally, and without any photos in the end, because it'll just take me too long to select some and add them, etc. I will post photos eventually, though. 
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I knew I needed to marry someone who liked cats, so I did and many many years ago (between 16 and 21 years ago, seriously)... before we were married, we'd picked out a name for a yellow/orange cat: Lepton (paying homage to K's discipline). I don't know why, but I felt that this name sounded and felt somehow like "yellow."

Fast forward to the adoption of our newest family members... We knew for sure one of them would be named Lepton, but what about the other? Well, "Quark" was my first thought, but in our future-pet-conversations-back-when-we-were-dating we'd both agreed that Quark was a good name for a smallish, sand colored, fat short-haired dog (which we'd never had because I think dogs are too much work).

Enter Oxford University -- thank you, thank you so much! -- which is the very first Google result when you type in "Lepton and Quark" and which I looked up even before we decided for sure we were going to adopt our "babies." The reason I'm so thankful is that I actually took the following statement as a sign that we should most definitely adopt these kitties:

The term 'quark' was introduced by Murray Gell-Mann, the word originating from the book 'Finnegan's Wake' by James Joyce in which the quotation 'Three quarks for Muster Mark' appears.

When I found out that the word Quark had actually been taken from a literary work I was just delighted! You see, our boys' names were also chosen for their respective connections to K's discipline and to mine (literature -- Linton is a last name in one of my favorite books, Wuthering Heights), so it's really cool that our new cats' names have these connections as well!

And so they were named... our Lepton -- which is much smaller, lighter and faster and daring than Quark, which is fittingly heavier and more cautious (think electron vs. neutron). Yeah... overly geeky like most things in our family! :)

Now all I need is the courage to break the news to BIL this weekend and then I can fill up facebook with photos of my cuties! ;)


I told BIL two weekends ago and he sounded like he already knew. Well, I said "oh, I want to show you guys photos of the new members of the family" and he replied "The kitties?" I wonder who told him. Whatever... They were here last weekend and fine with the cats, but of course that's because they still live in the garage.

I know I shouldn't care what others think of our decision to have pets and all, but unfortunately I'm very susceptible to worrying about other people's opinions of everything in my life. :(

So... what do you think of our geeky kitty names? What are your present & past pets' names?

P.S. I can't believe I've been blogging so little, I have to catch up. Even with November (NaBloPoMo), I risk not passing last year's number of posts. :(  Oh! but I just remembered I have another post today!!