Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
(It's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world)

I finished reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides sometime last week and I found it to be amazing. The book had been suggested to me on more than one occasion so I finally picked it up about a month ago and decided to give it a go. From the very beginning, I was hooked. For those not familiar with the story, it's a very complicated tale about a young girl who grows into a man. It tells three generations of stories of how the character, Calliope Stephanides (later Cal), came to be and focuses on more than just the superficial story of a hermaphrodite.

When I finished reading, I couldn't help but still feel connected to the character and I was disappointed that the story had ended. Especially since I imagined the character to strongly resemble Sanjaya from American Idol, but that is beside the point. The novel is really so much more than gender confusion, and yet that's the part that stuck with me the most. What must it be like to be born to identify with one gender and then later find out that's not your gender at all?

I'm sure I've been driving my friends crazy about this book. I've brought it up every chance I've had and I've been recommending it like crazy to everyone. Christin and I were having dinner the other day and I was discussing the book with her.

"What would you do if you found out the kid you were raising to be a girl was actually a boy?" I asked her.

"I don't know. I would be a little freaked out I guess," she said.

While I know it's not really that uncommon, I agreed. I don't really know how I'd deal with it.

I don't have any kids, I just have a cat. I'm perfectly happy with that. My parents' cat had kittens last July and I knew right away I wanted one. I requested a boy, because the last cats I had were girls and they drove me crazy so I wanted a change. I knew as soon as laid eyes on the little orange fuzzball I wanted to keep him, and I was even more pleased to learn that he was a boy.

"What will you name him?" they asked.

The first name to pop in my head was Herbert. I was in love with him instantly.

Herbert has been a great cat. He has so much personality and almost everyone who meets him adores him. He is vocal and loveable; friendly and playful. I started teaching him to play fetch at a very young age with his mouse toy and now it is one of his favorite past times. I've always teased about certain personality traits of his. For one, he loves men. Every guy that comes to my apartment he immediately wants to bond with. He usually does this by planting himself firmly on their crotch which has attributed to his nickname - "crotch warmer." As for the ladies that visited me, he felt the need to inspect their purses every time, planting his head firmly inside. He never met a high heel that he didn't love as well.

I would often joke with my friends, "Herbert seems to love purses and shoes a little too much. Maybe he is a gay cat?" I was pleased by this, but then I started developing the habit of calling him really masculine nicknames like "Burt Reynolds."

Perhaps I am a neglectful mother to Herbert, because I didn't go out and get him vaccinated right away. I've had cats all of my life and we have rarely got any of them shots and they have lived long, healthy lives (some even outstayed their welcome) so I didn't see it as a big issue. I figured I would get everything taken care of at once, and that was when it came time for Herbert to be neutered. As it stands, Herbert has yet to go to a vet, but since he is getting to an age where I figured it wouldn't be too long before he would start spraying, I knew a trip to the vet was inevitable.

It was after a trip to my parents, in which Herbert accompanied me, that I started to notice a change in him. Once we got back to my place, he seemed restless. As it got later, I noticed a changed in his meow as well. No longer was it a soft mew, but it started to seem throaty and very pigeon like. I had definitely heard this meow before; my cat was in heat. I was kept awake almost all night as I listened to him call for the females he was so dying to impregnate. I should have been proud for my little fella, he's growing up after all, but instead I was confused.

"I thought you had a lot of cats growing up," my friend said to me.

"I did." He was correct in assuming I had been around a lot of cats in heat.

"But something's not right," I told him.

For one, none of the male cats I had ever carried on like Herbert. It seemed as though they never really went in heat, they just took advantage of the time the female cats were in heat. The only thing I could recall our male cats doing was spraying, and Herbert had yet to spray anything. I knew what I was thinking, but I just couldn't bring myself to admit it. I decided to call my mom.

"Mom," I said frantically. "I think Herbert is a girl."

"He has balls, doesn't he?"

"I think he does."

"You think?"

"I don't know! I just assumed! I was told he was a boy! I don't look at my pets' genitals!"

"Well why would you think he is a girl?" she asked.

I explained to her his meowing habits, and she quickly dismissed those.

"He's an inside cat and you don't have him neutered," she explained. "There is probably a cat in heat nearby and he is meowing to get her attention."

I thought about that. It certainly seemed like a reasonable explanation. Herbert was dying to get outside and be a tom-cat and he couldn't so he was acting out by driving me crazy with his meows! YES! That's it! But no, wait ... there was something else.

"Mom, do male cats get into position too?"

"What?"

You know, with their butts in the air. Posting."

"Posting?"

"Yeah! Assuming the position to get some! Posting their vagina!" I was talking way more about cat sex than I ever wanted. Mom was speechless.

"Uh, yeah, boys cats don't do that," she finally said. "Is he licking himself a lot?"

"Yup."

"Yea, uh, you might wanna check out his balls."

Holding him down, I lifted the cat's tale as he struggled to free himself. Every time I touched him, he responded in his throaty meow which only made the situation more awkward. I felt as though I was providing him with foreplay so I was trying to make it as quick as possible. Parting the massive fluff that surrounded his backside, I checked to find the testicles I hoped would be there. Yet, despite all the hair I was searching through, I had yet to find them. Herbert had no balls.

I took a moment to collect myself. How could this have happened? Nine months of having a cat and I didn't realize it had no balls? Nine months of "Here boy" and "You little handsome man, you" and I had failed to notice he lacked the two things that made him this? I had failed as a pet owner! I thought to myself that I had to be wrong, and surely the balls must be there so I checked again. Even though I could see how I was easily fooled to think he had balls, they were indeed absent. In their place were two huge tufts of hair that I must have mistaken time and time again as the things that provided my cat his namesake.

I will admit it, I was traumatized. People can say, "Oh, it's just a cat" all they want, but when you are attached to your pet its very easy to attach certain personality traits to them too. My perception of Herbert was of a boy cat. How could I get used to calling him a girl cat? I hadn't been treating him like a girl cat at all! Could I just change that at the drop of a hat all because I found that he happened to have some healthy lady bits? All that time he was playing with purses and shoes, he was trying to tell me something! All the times he was loving on men, that was a sign! He wanted me to know he was a girl all along! Seemed completely reasonable to me, but this is probably why women who own a lot of cats are often deemed as crazy too.

Once correctly identifying Herbert's gender, I did the thing I should have done months ago and made my cat an appointment for the vet. When asked my cat's name I responded "Herbert" and immediately I was embarrassed for my poor little kitty. Imagine being a girl cat and being named Herbert! I couldn't just change it completely; she is used to the name! I thought back to Middlesex when Calliope decided to adopt his male gender as his main identifier, and finally became Cal. It crossed my mind that maybe I should change Herbert's name after all. Calliope had a nice ring to it. I considered it a possibility. Or maybe Bertie. Bertie is cute.

Call me crazy if you want to, I know I must sound that way. Laugh at me, ridicule me, but it's completely fine. I probably deserve it. I let my cat live nine months as a male when she was a female, so I can't help but feel guilty for it, and quite frankly, a little freaked out too. I suppose after having her fixed, I could just go about things as if nothing happened. I could choose not to tell my friends that Herbert was never a boy to begin with, and allow her to go on living as the spunky little purse loving boy-kitty. But, on second thought, nah. I like the idea of my cat having a backstory. It gives her way more personality. I like the idea that if my cat were able to write a book about her life she could start out a paragraph like "For the first nine months of my life, I was a boy ... " it would be a best-seller!

Say goodbye, Herbert Moonshine Savage. From this day forward, you will now be called "Sherbert." Get used to it.

Tashina Savage want to wish both her best friend Christin and her kitty Herbert best of luck in surgery this week. Send your get well soon cards to sundaysgirl@gmail.com.