My nana maternal grandmother who taught me swears had one of the most ridiculous pet names for her cat when I was growing up. For reasons known only to her, she simply called the cat: Kitty Kitty Meow Meow. The creature in question was an absolute love bug and lived to be almost twenty.
When I was dating my last boyfriend Brendan we ended up living with his mom briefly before we moved up north together, and his sister lived at home too. One day I was sitting in the kitchen and heard Brendan call teasingly to his sister, “Okay, Miss Kitty Kitty Meow Meow!”
His sister laughed but my head shot up. “What did you just say?”
Brendan ambled over to me, “Oh, it’s an old inside joke. There was this one day I was riding the bus to Charlie’s house and I heard this girl on the bus say her grandma’s cat was named Kitty Kitty Meow Meow. It was so stupid I rushed home to tell my sister. It’s like naming a dog Doggy Doggy Bark Bark.” He was hysterically giggling just relating this story.
I stared at him.
I said, “Charlie and I were on the same bus route.”
He blinked, his giggles tapering down and slowly started to frown.
“That girl was me. That is the name of my nana’s cat.”
It turned out that while Brendan, a year younger than me, had never met me before we both graduated high school, he had apparently sat behind me once on the bus and turned a brief snippet of my life into a meme with his sister. Then a decade later we met through Charlie in college and went on to date. We were both flabbergasted by this coincidence.
But there was one more twist in store for me. I told my family about the way our paths had crossed before we ever dated and they thought it was hilarious.
Then a few weeks later I got a frantic call from my parents while they were in California visiting my paternal grandmother.
“Hey guys, what’s going on?”
There was weird excited static and thumps as the phone passed around and I heard my dad in the background urging my grandma, “Tell her!”
My grandma said ponderously, “You know my cats name is Kiki.”
“Of course, it’s a really cute name.”
“Your dad wants me to tell you the full thing.”
My eyes widened. I could not believe what was about to happen to me but I knew it was coming.
“Her name is Ki-Ki Meow Meow.”
I got it on both sides. Both my grandmas, in different states, with no contact, had named their cats the same silly ridiculous thing. I immediately ran to tell Brendan who laughed so hard he almost threw up.
