When we began talking seriously about starting a book review blog together, the one place we stalled was the name. I’m not good at coming up with names for anything. We went through a few before Gina thought of of a picture we have of one of our cats, Gus: “What about The Red Hat Cat blog?”

Gus was born on June 26th, 2015, in a litter of six. He was the last to be born and the runt of the litter. He grew up to be the biggest of the pack! (And the fluffiest.) I named him and most of his siblings after Disney characters; Gus was named after the mouse in Cinderella.

Of all the cats I’ve known in my life so far, Gus is definitely the one whose personality comes close to the idea of a typical cat: He’s arrogant, self-absorbed, and selfish. There’s no malice in anything he does — he just assumes that if he wants something a certain way, then everyone must want it that way, too, because his way is perfect. Gina often says that Gus doesn’t consider himself a cat; he thinks of himself as Gus, and all other cats and humans as lesser Gusses.

His favorite toy is a straw. Any kind of straw, but he likes bright, colorful plastic ones best. He even knows how to play fetch with them! He doesn’t share well, though, and if you play with a straw in a way he considers “wrong”, you’ll get a look of distinct displeasure from him.

We’re not in the habit of dressing up our cats mainly because we like having all our fingers. But sometimes the urge strikes us, mainly when we find a cute outfit at Ross. When we saw the red hat in a store, we knew we had to get it and try it on our cats. As you can see in the picture, Gus was not amused. We don’t make him wear it… often.

As mascots go, we probably could have chosen a friendlier one. But Gus would probably think that of course he’s the natural choice for a mascot, because he’s Gus, and thus he is perfect. We won’t do anything to convince him otherwise, even if we could!