cat pyjamas

A while ago I was in the office waiting for a meeting with a relatively new coworker from Engagement Management, Dan. (Not the same Dan to whom I regularly provide flak in this space; the Dan I'll be discussing in this post is someone I actually like.)

So, my colleague John and I were waiting for Dan outside a conference room, and Dan came up looking kind of frantic and waving his cellphone and said, "I apologize in advance, but there's a guy in my backyard with a bobcat and he's supposed to be calling me right back." Then the phone rang and Dan ducked around the corner to take the call, and John and I marveled at the idea of having a large feral cat in your yard. I also wondered, "Who is this man in Dan's yard, and what does it mean that he has the bobcat? Did he tranquilize it, or corner it behind some gnome statuary, or engage it in conversation about this season's lineup on the Discovery channel? And why does this man know Dan's cell phone number?"

Dan was away on his call for several minutes, understandably, and in the meantime John and I informed every passerby of the fascinating events apparently unfolding in a yard in North Berkeley. "Dan V. has a bobcat in his backyard!" I would excitedly inform my colleagues.

Finally Dan came back, looking a bit frazzled but also slightly relieved. We asked him for details. And it was as he provided those details that we realized that the guy in his yard was a hired landscape worker, and the bobcat was in fact a Bobcat, the small utility vehicle. The urgency had stemmed from the fact that the guy had triggered Dan's home alarm system and did not know how to turn it off.

Needless to say, I found this situation vaguely embarrassing (particularly since I'd just created the impression among at least 6 people that Dan was in the midst of an exciting and unusual wildlife drama) but also hilarious. And ever since that day, Dan and I have had a running bobcat joke: for a while it was physically impossible for us to send each other an email without inserting an image of a bobcat (whether it was the cat, the vehicle, a sports team logo, a photo of Bobcat Goldthwait, etc.). Once I walked by the ajar door of a conference room, saw Dan inside, and made a clawing gesture with my arms and silently growled when he caught my eye. (He told me later that this set him to chuckling uncontrollably, much to the confusion of the others in the meeting, who hadn't seen me.)

So when, a few months later, Dan and I found ourselves as part of the leads team for a new project, and the project needed a code name, we felt that it would be appropriate--no, necessary--to somehow work bobcats into this code name. I did some research and discovered that the bobcat's genus/species name is Lynx rufus, and when I looked up the etymology of the word 'lynx' I discovered that it is supposed to come from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'light.' There is speculation that this has something to do with the bobcat's eyes seeming to glow, or with its ability to see in the dark. My linguist's bullshit meter went into high gear particularly on the latter theory, but I didn't care because seeing in the dark is arguably related to our project, and so BINGO, I had a code name meaning 'bobcat' that I could totally sell to management without even tipping my hand.

And so Project Lynx came to be, and I get a not-so-secret joy every time I hear it said or see it written down.

Last week the project contracts were out for signature and I decided it was time to find a mascot for us, but when I stopped by the toy store near work the only thing I could find was a cute, but rather large stuffed bobcat that I decided was too over the top for a Grownup Professional Person's cubicle. I was complaining about this to Casey, and said "I want something more like that size," and pointed to the Beanie Baby dachshund that resides on one of my monitors. Casey said, "Why don't you just knit a lynx suit for the dachshund?"


Casey is a genius.

I went home that night and was pleased to find that my knitting infrastructure is such that I can sit down and knit a lynx suit without even having to stop by a yarn store for supplies first. Meet Lynxie (Lynx + Doxie):


I'm particularly pleased about him because in addition to my fascination with dachshunds I also have a fascination with animals wearing costumes of other animals--you know, like teddy bears in bunny suits or dogs in bee costumes. I mean, sometimes it's really cute and/or funny, but it also always feels somewhat creepy and illicit, like the animal equivalent of blackface. In any case, Lynxie combines two of my obsessions in one. Bonus.