Sorry, friends, end of semester cram and the family has been away, leaving me with three dogs...kinda fits the narrative.
On the "Jeep," cool story! Many forget that the U.S. Army Jeep itself was named after another character...the animated fun-loving critter of the Popeye cartoons...
Though the name stuck to the vehicle and took on a life of its own, my dad made sure to point out the origin of the name; when you think of the soldiers and how they imported whimsical pop culture items to lighten their dreary world, its understandable--not to mention the nature of Popeye's Jeep, which was cheery and harmless, fast, and could disappear and reappear at will. Note also the similarity of the original "Jeep" character to another WW2 persona...
Hard to tell whether this flyboy name his coyote pup after the vehicle or the critter; maybe both!
On the cats, David, this poem from an anthology I have:
The Cats of Kilkenny
There once were two cats of Kilkenny,
Each thought there was one cat two many;
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there weren't any.
Strange how a whimsy becomes chilling prophecy when a certain context--say, a North Africa campaign Panzer diorama--is given, huh?
