Hello. My name is X. Iris Rowdina and I'm co-owner of the one you call Yamaneko2 along with a little twerp named Bandit. The X is for Xena. You can call me Iris -- my eyes are the color of newly-budded leaves when kissed by the spring sun. I think it's the color that the Japanese call midori. My fur is long and black; you may admire the locket on my chest, but don't touch or else I'll leave. I was abandoned in West Lafayette by a jackass who gave me a red-and-white collar; you don't wear IU colors in West Lafayette so why would you make your cat wear them unless you were a boor.
I am not Basement Cat. There is no Ceiling Cat. There was a Ceiling Cat pretender in the house: my human stupidly left a plastic bag out and Bandit got caught, panicked and darted into the rafters between floors. The house-humans were scared that she had hung herself, so they called a pest control firm, tore some basement ceiling tiles out and $65 later they saw her safe and free, but shaken. Ten minutes after the technician left, she came down. Moral: It is not for mortals to pretend to deity, even a deity that watches you masturbate.
In fact, this whole "Basement Cat" thing is starting to bother my human. He and his mother visited a pet shelter last Christmas, and the shelter was full of cats and dogs, and about half of the animals in the cages were black. This was news to me -- in my day and before the Basement Cat pics, black cats did not make up so high a proportion in the shelters. I hope the reason so many of us go unadopted is that we're simply hard to see. The shelters say that but my human suspects that it would do shelters no good to accuse potential of bigotry passed to the animal kingdom and this Basement Cat crap does not help. And I know we're not human, but it's no fun to know that some shelters discount fees for the adoption of black cats.
That locket on my chest? I adore it, but chances are such lockets saved my ancestors' lives. That bit of white apparently meant that my ancestors were not the spawn of the devil or a witch's familiar. It also made it a bit harder to catch plague-bearing rats.
There used to be rumors of Satanists who would sacrifice us to the Devil, so shelters would not adopt black cats out during the month of October. Three guesses as to which cats did not live to see Christmas.
Anyway, I am definitely the more puissant of the house's felines. (It's not the color of my fur -- its length makes me hard to claw and I have an extra two pounds of muscle.) Bandit recognizes that and usually shows due deference, but sometime she needs a reminder. I do let the beta cat eat first; we alpha cats have a tradition of nobility in this house. Yamaneko2 says that the former alpha, whose face, color and form were like mine when he met me, actually stared down a chocolate Lab next door while the beta took to the flowerbox. He also let the beta eat first.
Enough about myself. Some of you out there are probably going to a shelter to adopt a kitten in the next few days. Please be sure to look carefully in the cages and consider a black kitten or cat.