The Fat One and The Other One

I have two cats. I got the first one (she's all white and REALLY big) in high school and the second one (he's all black and a little skittish) the summer after I started college. So, while these are technically my cats, my mom has been taking care of them for me while I was in college apartments. Then when I bought a house a year ago, I was all set for her to bring me my cats, and she decided she didn't want to bring them with her when she came last July because she was worried the plane would be too hot. Valid? Perhaps. But I think she just didn't want to give up the cats. This actually turned out to be for the best because right about that time, I got engaged to my husband, and he loathes cats. I don't understand it, of course, but there you have it. So my parents kept the cats, and I married my husband, and all was well with the world.
Until my parents asked me to take the cats while they moved from Hawaii to Las Vegas. Don't get me wrong - they're my cats. Of course we'll take them for as long as my parents want (but remember, my mom secretly wants to keep them, so it shouldn't be for very long), so dad put them in their kennels and sent them to me via Delta Cargo. Now, Tyler has been great about the whole thing, but part of the reason he hates cats is because he's allergic. So his throat has been itching for the last two months, but he's a good sport. BUT he keeps me entertained as I watch him interact (directly and indirectly) with my cats.
It started when I noticed that he never referred to them by name. They have fabulous names. Both named for Shakespeare characters, they are Desdemona (the white one) and Puck (the black one). But Tyler wouldn't refer to them as "Desdemona" and "Puck." He called them "the fat one" and "the other one." This is partly because it was days before Puck would come out of the back room and sit with us for any extended period of time. For the first few days, I think Tyler would have thought I might be lying about there really being two of them except for the brief glimpses he saw of a black shape scurrying past the entryway to the living room. But one day I asked him about it, and said if he didn't want to call them by their names, it would at least make more sense to call them "the white one" and "the black one." To which he replied, "I think this is funnier. I use humor to diffuse stressful situations." And he's right; it is funnier.
And then there's the names he started calling them directly, when he became comfortable enough with them to talk to them in the second person. He calls Desdemona "Tubby" and Puck "Twitchy." He doesn't anticipate ever getting to a place with the cats where he calls them the names I picked for them. Oh well - at least he's making me laugh.
A few weeks ago, he started something he "learned" from a Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live sketch. Obviously it's a joke, but in the sketch Will Ferrell teaches how to train your animal using sarcasm. So now Tyler occasionally asks Desdemona, "Are you comfortable, Tubby? Can I get you anything? A glass of juice, perhaps?" Desdemona, of course, does not react in any notable way, which for some reason only makes this funnier to me.
Finally, there was the comment he made the other day. He said that he doesn't have to interact with them much, except occasionally "disciplining them with [his] acerbic wit." And it's true - where the cats are concerned, he certainly does have an acerbic wit.