Tiglath

        The little yellow cat entered the household on soft padded feet, as is usual with such creatures. That, however, was only a ruse to lull the rest of the inhabitants into thinking that this was a placid kitty with no intent to disrupt the peace and quiet of the home.

        The little bugger, still in need of a name, soon became obviously a terror to his species-mates and the humans and dogs, as well. Because I was, at the time, engaged in a course on Ancient Civilizations, the name Tiglath Pilezer came immediately to mind. The original Tiglath, an Assyrian king of millennia ago, was a rather ruthless and brutish sort, famed for doing really ugly things to people that he didn't care for. The name stuck, and the feline was forevermore called Tiglath.

        For some time, the cat, his name, and his demeanor remained consistent. Then, we moved into a new house. In the course of his investigations of the new surroundings one morning, Tiglath moseyed into the bathroom to find an open door to a linen closet. I was sitting at the breakfast table with my morning coffee when I noticed Tiglath prancing out of the bathroom with a plastic bag containing some greenish herbal material clamped firmly in his jaws. He had clearly mistaken the stuff for catnip when, in fact, it was the prior owners' kid's stash that had been hidden under one of the closet's lower shelves.

        After a couple days of the raving munchies, Tiglath adopted an entirely different outlook on life and became a calm, laid-back kitty who seemed to see everything in shades of GREEN, man. He lived for nearly ten more years after that incident and remained (thankfully) a healthy, if somewhat perpetually stoned, lapcat.