What's in a name?

Back when I was working with Anjellicle Cats Rescue in NYC, I would routinely find myself having to rename my foster Keetains.  I say "rename" because they would all come from Animal Care and Control bearing not only little numbered collars, but also names.  Such names.  I guess when you're out of ideas and a mom cat is popping out kitten after kitten right in front of you, you have to think fast.  Judging from the monikers bestowed upon these rescues, it appears some of these people were either loopy from overwork -- or very, very drunk.


Take my own cats, for example.  When I was kitten shopping, I picked out two siblings named Poppy and Thistle.  Turns out the entire litter of five were named after plant life.  I don't recall the other ones but I could swear one girl was Venus Fly Trap.

Poppy

Thistle

Another litter all had names starting with Z - Zara, Zither, Zaire and, lamentably, Zenon.  It's a bad enough name when spelled correctly, fer chrissakes.

I usually prefer to give my own Keetains human names. I re-christened Poppy and Thistle Julia and Sebastian, after the Flyte siblings in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.  I will never forget the 1981 PBS miniseries, which aired amidst the anglophilic frenzy surrounding Charles and Di. (I wonder, would they have been called "Chardiana" today?).  More specifically, I will never forget the sight of Jeremy Irons' and Anthony Andrews' bare naked buttocks on my dear mummy's telly.  An uncomfortable mother-daughter moment if ever there was one.

When "Kevin" arrived from the shelter, he was in a box along with an unrelated litter of four. (He was a singleton orphan; I think his feral mom had been euthanized).  Kathryn Willis and I, in a similar bout of Britishism, decided to name the sibs Margaret, Beatrix, Cordelia (after a third Flyte sibling from Brideshead), and of course Elizabeth.  Kevin became Keaton, and he's with me to this day.

My names are not terribly creative or unique, but they do seem to suit their respective owners.

The prize for creative kitty naming goes to my friend Lauren, who has a lovely cat called -- wait for it -- Manicotti.  Gotta love it.