Living Well in Westchester

A recent trip over to the Name Inspector blog, inspired me to post about our firm’s name, Fivecat Studio.

Being a great fan of business, I have read a plethora of marketing books, and understand well, the importance of a great name. Annmarie and I knew that we wanted to clearly differentiate our firm from the ho-hum “Smith and Smith” firms that practice throughout the region. We tried several derivatives of the McCarthy and LePage names, but nothing seemed to click with us.

Then we started thinking outside the box (or in our case, inside the house).

Annmarie has been a life-long supporter of animal rescue and in 1999, the year we launched the firm, we acquired our fifth rescued feline. We did not plan our lives together knowing that we would be living with five cats (at least I didn’t), but through many events of good fortune, we do (we share our house with two rescued Rottweilers as well).

For now, I will not go into the wonderful stories of how each animal found its way into our home, but in the spirit of explaining the studio’s moniker, I will tell you a short (or maybe not so short) story about our little grey cat, Tarzan Fostersquanz, Lord of the Dashboard (#5).

One cold winter evening, almost 10 years ago, Annmarie telephoned me in a slightly worried panic. “There’s a cat in my dashboard!”, she cried.

Now… you could just imagine my surprise… but you’d be wrong.

At the time, Annmarie had been volunteering for a local rescue organization, Forgotten Felines. Her assignment was to help manage the population of a large feral feline colony just outside the Village of Katonah.

For weeks, she would bring food to the cats attempting to build their trust and eventually, she had them eating from the palm of her hand. The next step was to take them to a local veterinarian where they would be neutered, then returned to the colony to live out their lives.

So, on this day, Annmarie planned to crate two adolescent litter-mates that she had befriended and proceed with the plan. She brought them their lunch and as they ate, she scooped up a kitten and started to carry it back to the open cat carrier waiting in the rear seat of her car (in hindsight, not exactly the proper technique for securing a wild animal).

Well, as she headed for the car, the mother of this kitty, trying to defend her offspring, latched herself on to Annmarie’s pant leg and would not let go. Then, not entirely unexpectedly, the kitten clamped its teeth into Annmarie’s hand. She made her way to the vehicle, dropped the angry cat into the crate and closed the door. Not learning her lesson, she went back for more.

Annmarie returned to the food, snatched the other kitten and brought it back to the same crate (another flaw in her plan). She opened the door to the crate and out scrambled the first. The second cat went into the crate as the first continued to screech and swirl throughout the interior of the vehicle. Annmarie closed the doors and waited for things to calm down before attempting to recover the escapee. She slowly opened the door and peered in through the window. She looked around and saw no cat. “He must have gotten out before I closed the door.”, she thought.

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Stay tuned for Chapter 2, coming soon.