There has been a lot of talk about animals in some form or other, and I got to wondering what sort of names people here are giving to their pets. There has got to be some good names (and stories) in this group. Or, it'd be fun to "hear" a few names you think would be great for a pet.
I think the most unique name in my family was made by my brother when he was very little. We had a female black cat named Tippetywitchet.
These days I've got a little manx named Cadfael (after the fictional Welsh Benedictine monk). My Cadfael is quite friendly, looks different than any cat in the house and since he came home from the shelter, he's, er... celibate.
My brother's cat is named Isis, and while it's a pretty name, we joke it would have been more appropriate to call her Menhit, another egyptian goddess who's name means "she who slaughters". His kitty is quite the aggressive little darling...
Does your pets names suit them, or have the nicknames taken over as their personalities emerged? I'd like to know.
Our cat is called Shah, since every cat knows that is is king of its domain. The name was also intended as a (feeble) pun on chat, a pun that would not work if we had used the feminine form of Shah. I am not looking to the time when I must use the expression from which checkmate derives.
Our cat's name is Fru-Fru. This was an attempt to appease my father when we got her - he hates cats. It's an informal Sardinian word for little cookies - I think they're called ice wafers or just wafers in English, although they are not as popular here as in Italy. The logic was - give the cat a Sardinian name - then maybe Dad, who keeps moaning about how wonderful Sardinia is, will like the cat. The choice of word was just because it was also a cute name for a cat. Note that it does anagram to Fur-fur, which is what I hate vacuuming up!
My new vet laughed when I told her the name. But she agreed that it suits her personality. (I'm not sure how she decided this.)
Her nicknames are mostly words which start with F. My current favourite is Fluffy. Also Fruf-Maguf was a stage I went through. Fru-Fru Della Ama was another one. Fru-Fru-ina (small Fru-Fru, using Italian suffix rules). Fru. Fru-ey. Fraggle. Fragola (raspberry, or is it strawberry, in Italian). It's never-ending!
smith, jones, beaujolais/boo [a real scaredy-cat], blossom, janey, teddy-bear (all cats, only two current); goldy (a fish) -- with one exception, my opinions in these matters carry no weight whatsoever.
Our pets are initially given common names, and inevitably end up with various nicknames. Currently, we have Peter, an orange tabby (ex-)tom cat; Zoe, a tiger cat; and Jeffrey (registered as Commodore Jeffrey), a Newfoundland dog. Peter has a very high voice, and is usually known as Pete-the-squeek, but he intimidates the dog, and is known to Jeffrey as The Great and Powerful Peter. Zoe is often Zo-Zo or Zoe-girl, and Jeffrey is Jeffersonian when he is not No, No, Get Down. Before we put her on expensive specialty food, Zoe had a digestion problem, and as a result her middle names are Eta Canari.
My white Bichon is named Pearl for her colo(u)r and her personality. Can't take credit it was her name when she was rescued. My gal pal had a Maine Coon Cat, a huge cat, lots of fluffy fur and an attiude, who's name was Feziwig de Flouf. Fez for short. One of the family's setters was named "Wheaties" because he loved the breakfast corn flakes of that name. wow
When I was growing up, we had a cat with identity issues... *he* was misidentified as a *she* initially, and so *he* started out as Mitzy. Ugh. It got no better when we discovered he was a *he* and we went for about a week to calling him Fritzy. (By this time, you understand, I had already embroidered *her* name on a satin pillow, and I figured it would be easier to just change the "M" to an "Fr" instead of starting over...) Well, that just didn't fit. Mom found him inordinately energetic and bouncy, so Tigger finally stuck (tigger also happens to be the Norwegian word for beggar, so a fit on both counts). I lost interest in the satin pillow, and he wouldn't have appreciated it anyway. In other ho-hum pet name news, a dog named Sparky came in and out of the household during Tigger's tenure.
I got to exercise some actual creativity when my aunt & uncle's new cat needed a name ~ an orange tabby, I decided he looked like Barkdust. And then there's my friend Margaret's cat, Spudgie. She has the softest fur you've ever felt!
Now I await the liberation from apartment living so I can install some cats (to be named Mugwump, Bernie, and Ert) as household fixtures.
We have a Bernese Mountain dog, a huge floofy fellow named Maximum (Max for short). We named him that when we got him because he was at maximum cuteness level and it was impossible to be any cuter. Pretty standard stuff so far, however…
on occasion we revert to calling him poultry, or “the only dog with white meat” as he is the most chicken dog ever. Oh he barks up a good show when someone comes to the door…all deep growls, resonant barks, angry slobbering and bristly hair, but the second the person walks in the door – off he goes to hide under the dining room table. And with a backwards glance as he runs away, you just know he is thinking “take the girl, take the girl, and the jewelry is in the top left hand drawer in the back under the lacy bras.”
Well, my only pet (a chiuauah/rat terrier) is named Milo. I got the name from a movie about a cat and a dog entitled Milo and Otis. Milo was the cat. (I named him when I was 9. )
I've recently been wanting to get an Irish Setter and name it Potato.
that reminds me of a joke that most of you have probably heard (i have a knack for that, which is why i seldom tell jokes)
A burgler, upon entering a house, hears a strange voice call out "Jesus is watching you". He hesitates, then moves closer to the source, only to hear again - louder - "JESUS IS WATCHING YOU!!". After a brief pause he creeps again toward the corner from which the voice is emanating, only to find a parrot in a wrought iron (well, actually i don't think the joke mentions wrought iron, but i'm trying to tie in a few threads here) cage. He breathes a huge sigh of relief, then with a chuckle asks the bird his name.
"Diogee", the bird replies (again, this isn't the name that the joke originated with, but i can't recall what it was supposed to be. it's really immaterial. but you are undoubtedly beginning to get a sense of why i rarely tell jokes....).
"DIOGEE??", repeats the burgler, with a derisive laugh. "What kind of an IDIOT would name his bird DIOGEE???", he scoffed, to which the bird replied dryly: "The same idiot that named his rottweiler "Jesus".
I used to breed siamese cats, and the ones we kept mostly had the names of kings and queens. Our queen who died at the ripe old age of 15 in 1997 was called Sirikit. Interestingly, I would have been jailed in Thailand for naming her after a Thai queen. Our tom and his sister (we bought them both at the same time) were called George (King George) and Alexandra (his wife), but quickly became "Red" and "Tortie" - he was a red point siamese and she was a tortoiseshell point. Sirikit became "Skrits" fairly rapidly. We've kept one of her daughters (who is now 16) and she is Chu-Tze (the last Chinese empress), but she is normally called "Choosy" or more commonly "you *%!@# mog!"
My dogs have had an eclectic bag of names. My shepherd bitch was "Elsie", my first keeshond was "Demelza" named after Demelza Poldark from the series and the current one is "Saffie", short for Saffron, named after the hapless daughter in AbFab.
I got the name from a movie about a cat and a dog entitled Milo and Otis. Milo was the cat. (I named him when I was 9. )
When I was 10, my brother and I both got cats from the shelter. Brother and sister cats, as it turned out. I got Joshua (who's name stayed the same) and he got Spock. Thing is, Spock was a girl, and definitely nothing like the Star Trek star, so we named her after a cat from a pet food commercial. Jennifer. We were just kids, and she looked exactly like the cat on the commercial....
Btw, loved the proposed name of Potato for an Irish Setter.
PS... I love the website spell checker. It's great for some laughs. For "Milo", it suggested "Milquetoast" as a possible proper spelling. And for my name it suggested "alien". How did it know?
Dear CK:"I used to breed siamese cats, and the ones we kept mostly had the names of kings and queens" I have read that Siamese cats in temples would attack intruders. Did any of yours display this behaviour? And if so, how did they treat cat burglars?
I have read that Siamese cats in temples would attack intruders. Did any of yours display this behaviour? And if so, how did they treat cat burglars?
You asked for it.
Red, my breeding tom, was a pet first and foremost so we didn't keep him in a cage the way battery breeders do. So, when there was nothing doing at home, like most toms he went to find his own fun. The outcome was that most of the kittens in the neighbourhood were relatives of our kittens. The long ears, Siamese wail and blue eyes were something of a giveaway!
Most of the locals knew Red and knew we owned him. When he was out on vigil singing on fences, he sounded so sad, hungry and downright forlorn that the people whose tabbies he was trying to seduce took pity on him and fed him. I will always treasure the phone calls I received (at different times) from near-neighbours, asking whether there was anything they should or shouldn't feed him ...
We bred for temperament rather than for show-winning physical excellence. While our breeding pair both had pedigrees as long as your arm we sold our cats without papers to good homes quite cheaply. We're still in touch with several of the people who bought them. They've all been long-lived, healthy cats who dote on people.
Siamese Toms Your account of the amorous adventures of your red tom is much like our experience, over 25 years ago, with our Siamese tom, Prince de Blu (he was a pedigreed bluepoint), a fantastically beautiful cat with a creamy coat and the most startling blue eyes to go with his blue-grey points. Very affectionate, and generally would sleep on my head.
Prinny, as we called him, had a truly awesome sex drive; you could not keep him in the house, since he would scream the place down (you could hear him eight houses away) until you let him out. Of course, there were lashings of strange kittens around the neighborhood after a while, most with blue eyes.
Prinny's sex life was his undoing. When he was about 6 years old, he went out catting one night and didn't return for several days. My mother in law, who was sitting on the front porch, saw him coming up the walk and screamed for us to come. Prinny staggered up the walk, and collapsed on the steps. We found that he had terrible bites on his legs, so we rushed him to the vet, who guessed he had come out second best in a to-do with a possum, of which there were plenty in our neighborhood. He stitched up Prinny, put in drains, bandaged him, gave him several injections, and we took him home (the cat, not the vet). Predictably, the very next day, the feline fury went to the door and started screaming. My wife, a nurse, figured that if he were human he certainly shouldn't be out screwing that soon, and tried to keep him in, but no go; we finally had to let him out. Next day, a neighbor called to say the cat was in his yard, after chasing and succeeding in coupling with his cat, but that he was acting strange. We went to bring him back, but he was gone. Next day, he showed up, staggering again, and collapsed and died before we could get to the vet again. The vet figured that nookie was too much for him in his condition. What a morality tale.
Cap K's mention of the Queen of Thailand's name gives me the opportunity to tell you about a conversation at a local Thai restaurant last week. On the wall were photos of two regal-looking people. One of my companions asked the (Thai) waitress "Who are the people in the photos?" "Oh, they're the king and queen of Thailand." "What are their names?" "Well, the queen is called Silly Git and the king -" "Called what?!?" "Silly Git." All five of us heard the same thing, both times. I must confess here to my own ignorance and that of the rest of the group - I had to get onto the Internet next day to discover that she'd been saying Sirikit.
I once had a duck whose entire life was one big identity crisis. We bought a pair of little Muscovy ducklings from the local feed store, and were told that one of them was male and one female. I named the male Henry and the female Josephine. Sadly, Henry was killed by some marauding animal, and poor little Josephine was left alone with a flock of chickens. She eventually got over her sorrow at losing Henry and became convinced that she, too, was a chicken--following them around devotedly, pecking at the ground and generally doing everything in a chickenish manner. All was well for a while, until I discovered that the little duck named Josephine was turning into a large Muscovy drake! The feed store, as usual, had gotten mixed up. There was nothing to do but shorten HIS name to Joe, since I was so used to calling "her" Josephine.
We tried getting Joe two female Muscovies to keep him company, but he would have none of them. He was still convinced that he was a chicken.
I understand from military friends that visited Thailand that the cats prowled the temples and would yowl and scratch anyone who tried to touch forbidden items. There was also a story going around (no vouching for this one) that the crown jewels were displayed openly with cats as guards ... go for the jewels and get covered by snarling, biting, claw-raking cats!
BTW I'm sure all you cat lovers know the Lillian Braun books, titles all start with the words "The Cat Who ..." wonderful series even for a dog lover like me.
AND, should I ever get an unnamed dog, given my past in music, I would name him Figaro for the joy of calling him using the famous "Barber of Seville" tenor aria!
FINALLY, the spell wrecker wants my wow signature to be wrangle. Wrangle (SOED CD) a freq. angry or noisy dispute, arguement or altercation. Hmmmmmm wow
My cats have dull, nothing names...Baby Bobo and Maggie. Maggie is 18 1/2 and hanging in there! She is a Maine Coon. Baby Bobo (grandchild responsible for this sickening name) is a Lynx Point.
What I would like to share are my favorite quotes about cats...true there are hundreds. "In a cat's eye everything belongs to the cat" (unamed English source) "If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." ...Mark Twain. Another that is soooo true "Cats love obedient people!" I am obedient!
My aunt, resident on a farm, once took pity on a yard cat which had become ill, got the health thing sorted and brought it inside so it became a house cat, their first ever. It remained unnamed (people tend not to name cats on farms - they are there for one purpose and one purpose only) until it began to show a distressing tendency to want to rule the roost. It would wake them up in the morning by sitting on the end of their bed and yowling. If that wasn't successful at getting them up to feed it, it would stalk across the bed and begin batting their noses (fortunately with a closed paw). When they finally gave in and got up to feed it, it would hunt them up the passage, swiping at their heels with its claws.
It drew blood on me once when I was staying and earned a few seconds flight time towards its pilot's licence.
In my house, that would have got it a death sentence. In their house, it merely got the cat named "Slash". Died happy, very old, and very much in control ...
I hope that all you cat-lovers have come across the books by Deric Longden -- some of the funniest English writing in print! And his wonderfully dotty mother!!!
Paulb...I checked our library via computer and they do have Longen's books...available even! So tomorrow I will go get "The Cat Who Came In From The Cold". Thank you!
My sister, who lives in Michigan USA, named her first cat Cuddlepie, after a character in a famous Australian children's book. All well and good, but my brother-in-law has never been happy with wandering around the neighbourhood calling the cat home...
Her second cat was named XB after an English beer.
Another friend adopted a cat called Kevin, who later turned out to be Kevina. By then, she had had both ears amputated due to cancer (she was a white cat and apparently this happens frequently to white cats), and her new appearance had given her teh nickname 'the Orc'.
Well, my only pet (a chiuauah/rat terrier) is named Milo
My partner's name is Milo and he complains that all the other Milos he runs across are either artists, villians, kids or animals (all less than fully fledged citizens, I guess).
I found a photograph of my great-grandfather with his pet, Quite, the dog. I invented another pet name like this that I loved, implying a mischievous pet, but now I can't remember it.
I am, and always have been, a committed felinophile. I cannot remember a time when there were not cats around the house - usually in the plural. We have always acquired cats in pairs, although when one goes on to the Great Hunting Ground, we do not usually burden the other one with a new companion.
However, we have recently laid this covention aside. Our old black cat, Gothmog (named for the Balrog, NOT the Ringwraith!) died of cancer of the liver at the relatively early age of 9 years. She left behind her daughter, Humbug. She was so named because when she was born - the only kitten in Gothmog's first litter - she was brown and cream stripes, just like the peppermint sweet. She is a beautiful tabby, very symetrically marked, but is also very neurotic. However, she loved Goth's second litter of four kits and played with them very well, so when her mother died, we decided to take in two more kittens to keep her company. The word was sent out that there was a vacancy for two respectable kittens and, very shortly afterwards, a Farmers Wife of our acquaintance arrived on the doorstep with two, totally grey, adorable little kittens. They looked at us appealingly (any cat-lover will know exactly what I mean) and we were hooked. They strolled round the house and looked at everything, found the litter tray and used it and settled down to take over the joint. Poor old Humbug, eight years old by now, was totally gob-smacked! She couldn't believe her eyes. She snarled and spat, and ran away and hid herself. She came out, trembling all over, for meals - so long as the new arrivals were nowhere to be seen - then disappeared into the shed outside again.
We thought, "Oh, well - she'll get over it soon." But she didn't. She kept up a feud with the poor little waifs (who, of course, would dog her footsteps - if that is possible for a cat! - and try to play with her. They thought she was lovely whilst she hated the sight of them.
It is only in the shared trauma of moving house (which Humbug also hated, of course) that she has come to terms with them, and will actually lie down beside them and groom them. It is probably because this is not "her" territory, as was the other house.
The grey cats, who used to be little boys but are now almost fully grown castrati are mistaken by everyone who calls for Russian Blues - they are truly beautiful cats - but they are actually farmyard moggies, with rural accents and habits. You will have heard the old adage that "all cats are grey in the dusk." I can assure you this is not true. Grey cats are invisible in the dusk - especially when they are sleeping on the second stair down! One is fat and lazy, the other is a psychopath, who spends his time trying valiantly, and single-handedly, to rid the world of its avian population. We have called them "Chaos" and "Darkness"
Or, of course, if we were smaller. I'll never forget the scene in "The Incredible Shrinking Man" where the hero, having become rather less than Lilliputian in size, was chased by the family cat.
(But even that was better than when he had shrunk even more and was threatened by a spider - ughhhhhh!)
The Incredible Shrinking Man" ... a good movie I thought ... was played by actor Glen Langan who also provided the voice of Big Brother in Orwell's "1984" wow
"They are miniature predators; if they were big enough, they would eat you." I was shopping at a nursery for ornamentals, when a small kitten "attacked" me, using the same placement of paws that lions on TV use, one paw bending the head to one side, the other paw tripping opposite leg, to make the wildebeest fall and break its neck. Only of course, the result was the kitten's doing a somersault. I took it home, and had a very lovable line of "Tuxedo" cats, looking like Sylvester. Incidentally they all had double paws, which I have read, originated in New England.
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.
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Jennifer. We were just kids, and she looked exactly like the cat on the commercial....
