Page 36 2026 Animal Stories Lincoln Daily News February 2026 Matt Boutcher My wife Abby and I have two cats, one named Moo and the other Angus. Moo actually existed as an idea in our minds well before she was born. When we were in college, we had an inside joke that we would one day get a Siberian Husky named Rocky and a white cat with black patches named Moo. We never ended up getting a dog, but we did get Moo. It was July of 2018, and I was thinking of what to get my wife for her birthday. We had just gotten married the previous month and had moved into the Lakepointe Apartments in Springfield just off Toronto Road. Not all of the apartments were pet friendly, but the one we moved into was. We had not talked about getting a cat named Moo for a while, and the idea came back around to me one way or another. On her birthday, I took Abby to the Animal Protective League (APL). When we got there, we were looking through all the cats, and she found one that she wanted. The cat was calico, having black and white, but also some spots of brown. The APL staff allowed us to open the cages and grab out kittens that we wanted to hold and play with. I reached in to grab the cat Abby was pointing at, and this little black and white cat jumped on my arm and climbed up to my shoulder. We ended up falling in love with this cat, whose name was Gonzo for about 5 minutes before we changed it to Moo. The rest is history. We sometimes (lovingly) call Moo our ‘spicy girl,’ on account of how she does not care for people outside our house. She warms up to people but is more likely to give someone a hiss rather than show them any amount of affection. Moo
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