Recently I subjected myself to the remake of the pub brawl classic Roadhouse. While I do love to test myself with how thin a plot I’m willing to accept, and some of the seaside scraps were fun, I yearned for the Swayze original movie. Both films are pure entertainment-for-entertainments’ sake and for some reason I forgive Swayze that more than Gyllenhaal. That’s probably my issue more than his.
More on Swayze in a minute - on with the list!
Bucky (Barnes) - 8?
Hermann Thomas was the name he arrived with. A gingham haze of cucumber sandwiches and old money crazy spinning in his eyes. Another rescue - but he escaped, or so the story goes…
As a kitten he was rescued, got his jabs and microchip and by all accounts on his way to becoming an upstanding member of the inner-west-unhoused feline community. Then he escaped, no-one knows how he got out or where he went, but he vanished, for six years. Then a miracle, he returned to the same rescue, significantly larger and proceeded to charm prospective rescuers. Needless to say we fell in love instantly with ‘Hermann’, even if we couldn’t take him seriously. He needed a new name.
Bucky Barnes, the young soldier in the Marvel Universe who went missing for years before returning to the story in phase 2 with some curious reprogramming behind the eyes. I do understand that many cats have that look, but it’s fun applying an individual narrative to them. Who knows what he went through in those lost years. All we know is he survived and was well fed. He gets on with everyone… apart from the dogs.
Bodhi - 3years (and counting)
Bodhi, Boggy, Boglanaught, Bodhus, Boglinator, the pet names keep on coming and he’s learned them all. Seventy-five plus kilos of chaos. As he approaches four he is mellowing out. We got him at ten months old and immediately went into the big lock down in 2021. He arrived via dog taxi with the name Bull, short for Bullet. The driver handed me his bag of kibble and gave me the classic - ‘hope you know what you’re doing’ look. I didn’t.
It turned out we were his fifth home - and came with all the associated training anxiety. The training is a blog in itself, so I’ll stick to his naming here. Bullet wasn’t really the name for us. We wanted something fun and doggish, but also meaningful. We also wanted to give him a chance by picking a name beginning with ‘B’. Burdened with the self-importance of a classical education, I wanted something ‘epic’. The Bodhisattva is an enlightened being - this was the goal for him with training. To become an enlightened rrroggo. Bodhi, sounded right and we liked what it meant.
Not long after his naming our amazing arborist met Bodhi. He hopped a four foot fence to get to us, as we watched him take down a dead tree from the back of the block. At the time he was a lightning fast fifty kilos with all day puppy zoomies. “You’re out of control Bodhi!” our arborist said. The quote immediately reminded me of the real reason I like the name Bodhi…
Point Break (1991)
The line is spoken by the great Keanu Reeves (Johnny Utah) to the late great Patrick Swayze (Bodhi) as they hurtle towards the earth, from twenty thousand feet, with one parachute between them. Utah barks the orders, a gun to the adrenaline junky’s head. Bodhi refusing to let up on the wild ride. It’s one of my favourite sequences of cinema and perfectly summed up my relationship with Bodhi at the time. Two stubborn maniacs inextricably linked waiting for the other to blink.
Three years later I like to think I’ve reigned Bodhi in - but there’s always room for one more wild ride, probably across the Nullarbor. Maybe in WA he’ll finally learn to surf. If you meet him… he’s a big woofer, a big boofer, with a heart of gold and slobber for all.
That’s all the animals… now we just have to get them there!
Great metaphors!