Ursa Major

My wife and I acquired--better said, he acquired us--our first cat together more than 25 years ago.

My brother and I were out star gazing in May in Florence County, Wisconsin, when I felt something brush up against my leg. I said to my brother as calmly as possible, "Don't react or anything but I think there's a skunk down by my feet." Just then the critter meowed.

I opened the car door, the dome light came on, and I saw a tiny gray tiger stripe kitten only a few months old who had already struck out on his own, probably from a farm in the area. I gave him a few pets and went back to star gazing under the inky black skies of northern Wisconsin, with the constellation, Ursa Major, The Big Dipper, directly overhead.

When we decided to leave to have dinner at a local bar-restaurant, to my amazement this tiny cat tried to climb into the car, even though the motor was now running and fairly loud. He clearly decided leaving with these big old humans was better than staying in the wild. Given that, I couldn't resist taking him along. All I could do was hope my lovely wife, who was almost 250 miles away, wouldn't mind. When I arrived back home in Wauwatosa (a Native American word meaning "Land of the Fireflies") outside of Milwaukee a few days later and told my wife the story she warmed to the little bugger immediately. We named him Ursa Major naturally.