I've had a variety of pets over the years, almost all of whom have had rather odd names. And each reader nods his or her head and says to himself, "Now who'd have thought that of Ted?"

Many years ago a friend gave me a chow puppy. With his big main he looked like a lion. So he became Sign-on the Dotty Lion. Later, when we got a female, she became Tear-On. Our little goats we had in West Virginia were Rainbow (the proverbial goat of many colors) and Monday (goat o' Monday.)

More recently I somehow inherited a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, who was yclept Rasher O'Bacon, being as Irish as Paddy's pig, I guess.

When I lived in Virginia my ex and I were bicycling near Mt. Vernon when she spotted a cat in a tree and said I should rescue it. I gave her the old firefighter's line, "Ma'am, have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?" But I got him down, discovering in the process that he was stone blind. He became Justice.

I now own a boxer named Shorts, T-shirt having passed on to that great dogfood bowl in the sky. And Friday I broke with tradition. We are the proud roommates of a Manx cat, appropriately named El Gordo because he weighs somewhere between 20 and 25 pounds.


TEd