Ida the asteroid....

Shot with a photographer a few days ago, an Astronomer, toting his film camera and lovin' it...... two days later, I still feel the need to update on him. Partly, because he was so nerdy and cute. But mostly, because the story of how he came to name his cat amused me - I love that it is so in-tune with his being an Astronomer. Since there was no-way-in-hell, I could possible repeat his cat-naming tale - I wrote him for help and below is the email he sent (above is photo of Ida - not the cat, silly; the asteroid).

" Ok, here's the cat story, but you have to attribute it to "some photographer" that you shot with - not just me. Anyway, the first asteroid that was discovered to have a moon (ie, it had another asteroid orbiting it), was named Ida and the moon was named Dactyl. Kind of amazingly, this was discovered in 1993. Anyway, my cat has extra toes which is a mutation called polydactylism. So I connected that back back to the moon named Dactyl (polydactylism).... so the cat got named Ida. It's really a nerdy story. To take things even further, the Linux server that serves some of my web pages and email is called dactyl"

Come on - I know someone out there just giggled!.... That has to be the cutest, nerdiest, most endearing name for a cat with too many toes... ever to be named!