This is my cat. We brought him home in June of 1995 when he was about six weeks old. With five family members trying to come up with just the right name and not agreeing on anything, he lived with us for three days as “Kitty.” At that point, I just thought it was terrible that we had not named him yet, so I began to question the family to try to come up with something. I could not hear him, so I asked, “What does he sound like?” My husband and kids said he had kind of a high pitched, squeaky meow, and since he was a kitty, that description seemed right to me. Mittens, Streak, Phantom, none of the names we were coming up with seemed to suit him.On the evening of the third day, my youngest daughter was playing with our still unnamed kitty when an advertisement for an Elvis CD came on the television. At that point, I suggested to the family, “Should we name him Elvis?” There were no objections, only smiles. So the kitty finally had a name, Elvis.
When we got Elvis I was wearing the strongest analog hearing aids I could be fitted with, but I could not hear my new kitten’s meow. He was a cute, playful kitten, so I enjoyed everything else about him; his adorable face, pretty eyes and really soft fur. I did not hear Elvis until after I was hooked-up with my first cochlear implant in September of 2001 when he was six years old.
Elvis is 14 now and I have listened to him greet, complain, beg, scold and give his opinion for eight years now and I am grateful for every “meow” I hear. He still has a high-pitched squeaky meow and he likes to use his voice. If I could have heard him when we were naming him, he might be called “Squeak”.
