On The Naming of Cats


April 1998

How many times have you encountered a cat named Fluffy or Cindy or Puss and wanted to throttle their owner?

I know I have. And it drives me nuts. These folk are probably also responsible for the plethora of Jasons, Sharons, Michaels and Kellies that the world is afflicted with. Surely it must be possible to be a little more imaginative? OK, I'll accept that there might be some good reasons for choosing names for your kids out of the Top Ten Names. For example, their classmates will at least know how to spell Sharon, Michael or whatever. But why on earth do half of all the cats in existence have to be named Fluffy or Tibby? Cats don't care how their names are spelled, but I'm quite sure that if I were a cat I would be embarrassed beyond belief if summoned by the name Fluffy.

It's not just cats. When I was a child at school, I had a pet guinea pig. (Not for very long, mind - after a few months I got bored by its lack of reactivity and interest in the environment, and gave it to my little sister who spent hours trying to teach it to "come" and "fetch". But that's another story.) I wanted to name my guinea pig Arcadia after a character in a novel I was reading at the time. Now, I don't imagine that the names given to guinea pigs have any real impact on anything much else, but my father decided that Arcadia was an inappropriate name for a guinea pig, and I had to call it something else. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but somehow that rodent wound up being called Marigold. Now that is a dumb name for a guinea pig!

I think names are really important. Not just for the obvious reasons of labelling, nor entirely for the more metaphysical magical reasons of knowledge/power inherent in names, but for the more prosaic (but related) reason that naming something creates a link between the namer and the named. It expresses the reaction of the namer to the named, and says something about both of them. I can't help feeling that the people who have so little interest in their pet cat that they can't be bothered thinking of a better name than Fluffy might in some cases be the sort of pet owners who don't really pay a lot of attention to their pets' needs or natures in other ways, as well. One can never be sure of course, on issues like these, but one definitely suspects!

So what sort of names are good names for cats (or other beasts)?

To me, the sign of a good name is that the namer has put a bit of thought into it. Something that reflects the nature of the named pet, or the nature of the namer, or something that refers to the relationship between them is good. For example, a friend of mine has a cat called Ceremony. As in "Don't Stand on Ceremony". Very witty, I thought - and good, because it indicates something about the cat (it's underfoot a lot of the time) and about the namer (that they'd rather not step on said cat). Better than Fluffy, eh?

For a clearer idea of the sorts of names I'm talking about, let me introduce you to some of my cats and the reasons they got their names.

1) Scrofula: visualise a scruffy semi-longhair tortoiseshell whose fur goes every which way and who looks like she is wearing a perpetual scowl due to the markings on her face. Imagine this cat with all the attitude and personality of a pirate's moll with PMT, and you've got the general idea. Scroffie came from the Animal Welfare League cat rescue people, and she was well past her "use-by" date when we got her. She had been scheduled to be "put down" a couple of months before due to having been in their care too long without being claimed by a new owner, and she had somehow slipped their attention and was still alive when we got there. Now, I'm a sucker for a feline hard-luck story, so of course this ugly-and-assertive cat came home with us. When we got her home, she bolted under the fridge, not to be seen for over a week.

Unfortunately, the fridge was ancient and decrepit, and leaked foul-smelling fluids onto the floor underneath. By the time our new cat came out, she was also rather foul smelling. The stuff had dried onto her fur, and it now stood up in rigid, revolting spikes all over her. Even the cat herself couldn't bring herself to lick it off, despite attempting to do so on several occasions. Eventually I picked her up and put her in a bath full of soapy water. She tolerated being bathed and bubbled with remarkable equanimity, and came out fresh as a daisy. But by then, the name had stuck - so Scrofula she remained.

2) Claude: this cat was another Animal Welfare League acquisition, but Claude was a tiny kitten when we got him. Claude is sandy ginger in colour, and fuzzy-plush in texture. He is a very affectionate beast, but very vague as well - I really don't think that Claude is firing on all cylinders. He puts himself in my path as I putter around the house, in an attempt to get my attention. He hasn't yet figured out (after years of doing this) that the inevitable consequence of standing at the feet of someone who is walking forward is that one will get trodden on. He always looks utterly aggrieved, surprised and hurt - "How could you?". But never learns. In a similar vague fashion, he will sit on your lap, and slowly and distractedly dig his claws into your leg without really being aware of it. Understand that this is not the usual "kneading" that cats do, but simply not-paying-attention application of claws. Which brings me to his name. We initially named him as a silly musical pun - Claude Depussy. But the name really stuck when his unfortunate habits with claws became evident.

In case you're curious, our other cats are called Flame, Ember, Sam and Ben (if you guessed that we didn't name the last two, you'd be right). Until recently, we had a seventh cat called Tribby (short for Tribulation or Tribble, depending on my mood) but he had to be put down due to contracting Feline Immunovirus, also known as Cat AIDS, which is incurable and contagious. Now that was a hard-luck-case cat - we found him a week away from dying from starvation and neglect and nursed him back to almost-health, but he had been permanently brain-damaged from deprivation and was a bit strange.

Cats can be named almost anything, in my opinion, as long as the name meets the criteria I mentioned previously. I have friends with a cat called Spook (the reasoning is fairly obvious), and I heard of one poor moggy named Foggy as he was grey and thick.

So how about putting a bit of effort into naming, folks? This would have the dual effect of making the world a slightly more interesting place and reducing the number of Fluffies that one encounters. Surely it's worth such a minor effort to have more pets with entertaining and informative names like Scrofula, Foggy and Ceremony.


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