A fictional (I think) one... My wife has just been reading The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp that includes a dog called Brexit. I rather like that. Imagine shouting it around the neighbourhood.
Yet another... Was just reminded that of one of the kittens we gave away was named Figaro by his new family. Yes - they enjoyed calling out, "Figaro, Figaro!"
A friend has just adopted a small grey cat she has named Oedipuss, a name I would like to steal if I get another cat.
On the other hand, I was talking to someone last night who has had three Yorkies in 26 years and named them Buttons One, Buttons Two and Buttons Three.
Our vets call their next patient in by the pet's name (or used to, when we had pets) and I maintain you have to think a bit about what's going to be broadcast into the waiting room; also bearing in mind the vet who has to call it. "Fluffyballs Cuddlebum, please?"
Our vets call their next patient in by the pet's name (or used to, when we had pets) and I maintain you have to think a bit about what's going to be broadcast into the waiting room; also bearing in mind the vet who has to call it. "Fluffyballs Cuddlebum, please?"
Hmmm .... could be tricky. I also answer to that name!
Our vets call their next patient in by the pet's name (or used to, when we had pets) and I maintain you have to think a bit about what's going to be broadcast into the waiting room; also bearing in mind the vet who has to call it. "Fluffyballs Cuddlebum, please?"
My favourite example of this was when my cousin and I gave our new, tiny, very scared rescue kitten a name that we hoped would inspire her to great feats in her intended role as mouse-catcher. The first time we took her to the vet, my cousin had the kitten zipped up in the front of her jacket and cuddled close, but with one glimpse (or perhaps sniff) of a waiting room with several big dogs in it, the kitten shot up our of the safe enclosure, jumped first to my cousin's shoulder and then scrambled straight up the still-open front door to crouch, trembling, on top of the door, uttering tiny mews of terror. While I then had to say to the receptionist with a straight face, "We're here with Terminator."
My childhood kitty was also a found kitten, found by me in the gutter by our house, about six weeks old.
I named her the very original name of ‘Tiddles’.
When I brought her in my grandma jumped on the chair and shouted “take it out, take it out”. She thought it was a mouse! My mum sent me up and down the streets knocking on doors to check if anyone had lost a kitten, nobody had.
Tiddles lived a long and healthy life and spent a lot of time on grandma’s knee. She was an amazing mouser and would line up their tails on the lawn, having eaten the rest of the mice.
One pet I had that sort of lived up to his name was Voldemort, a goldfish who lived in the pond at our house before last. He was definitely the boss fish of his small kingdom and had the scars from where he'd managed to flip himself out of the beak of a passing heron.
Our vets call their next patient in by the pet's name (or used to, when we had pets) and I maintain you have to think a bit about what's going to be broadcast into the waiting room; also bearing in mind the vet who has to call it. "Fluffyballs Cuddlebum, please?"
We adopted a 9 year old cat from the shelter. No way were we going to change her name. My very manly husband said, "You are telling me I am going to have to go to the Vet with a cat named Sweetie Pie."
When my daughter was three or four (I forget which), we bought her three goldfish for her birthday. She named them Tiger Tail, Whizzy Wagons and Grapefruit Sunshine.
A friend reckons you shouldn’t name your cat anything you don’t want to shout out to call them in.
I must have told this 15 times, but aged 17 I was out in the back yard in blissful awe of Saturn's rings thru' me telescope, when a querulous, questioning voice nearby said 'Twinkle, twinkle. Twinkle, twinkle. I stood bolt upright, as did the hair on the back of me neck. It was an old lady neighbour calling her cat.
I was trying to remember where I had heard of someone with a small dog called Puccini, and asked Auntie Google if she knew. There were hundreds of them. Still a good name, though.
Our two newest arrivals are Sparky. And Bob.
Their "official"registered names relate to the fact that they were born at the end of August 2023, under the "blue moon" so they needed celestial names. And their breeder is a Schubert fan. So Bob's "official" name is Night Brightness and Sparky's "official" name is Divine Sparks. And Bob's short name was just his breeders shorthand after Robert Tear, the tenor, whose friends knew him as "Bob'. The name sort of stuck...
The middle aged cat came with her name, which is Suleika (also the title of a Schubert song). We call her Suki.
And the senior cat is called Jai...which is not the name of a Schubert song (or any other song, for that matter). It is a Thai word, he being a cat whose origins are in Thailand, and I cannot recall what it means. Planet, maybe?
Our last dog, Islay, was named when we got her - she had been adopted by a friend from the local rescue centre on New Year's Eve, and my friend was Scottish, so it had to be a whisky name. My friend was unable to keep her because her cats objected - there was a rooftop protest!
However, she soon got nicknames. When she was good (and she really did want to be a Good Girl) it was Kim, the Little Friend of All the World, and when she was bad it was Imp of Satan!
She was, of course, the Best Dog Ever.
Previous dog: Kudzu. We asked the kids for name suggestions and nobody was willing to accept anybody else's answer, so we just picked it ourselves out of the mom & dad list. Nobody liked it at first. Then they all got used to it. He did grow to much larger than the breeder thought he would.
As usual very late chiming in on this thread. We have two cats that are from our local RSPCA. It was about 12 months between their adoptions.
The first to join us was Marcie, she is named for Marcelline the Vampire Queen in Adventure Time. Rest of the family were quite taken with that animated series so I agreed.
When we went to the shelter for our second cat, I thought he might not be suitable for our family being a longhair and Cheery Husband has asthma. Anyway this cat took a shine to husband and just adores him. Cat came with the name Captain Fuzzywinks. Obviously I was not going to be calling that from the back door.
As we already had Marcie a shorthair tabby and our new adoptee was a longhaired tabby, I thought another M name would be a goer, so he became Monet and took to his new name very quickly.
Marcie is very affectionate but not bright at all. Monet knows his name and has trained us to supply treats and take him for walks on his lead. During covid lockdowns husband built a shelf above his desk as Monet would come for a treat and a pat and settle on the shelf for the rest of the morning while husband worked. Now that husband has had to return to the office, Monet is very put out and still looks for him to be at his desk. Husband has to go to room to give treats before leaving for the office to keep Monet happy, even now.
Wife and daughter wanted a boy cat so they acquired a kitten and named him Archie. When he was taken to the vet for routine stuff the vet said -er, you might want to change the name of your female cat!
So on the suggestion of daughter's then boyfriend the kitten became Molly. (I think he had a dog called Molly). Since then she gets called a variety of names none of which seem to bother her at all; Molly, Dolly, Dolly-bear, Mollif, Dol-Dols, Mollifer, Dollifer, Furry-Features, The Animal etc etc.
Anyone else have multiple names for their pet?
My first cat was Clementine, as she was small and orange. The second was Tansy. I think she came with that name.
We currently have two guinea pigs, which my sons instantly named Lily and Violet. I call them Lily-Lou and Violetta for long, but they mostly get referred to as the piggies, piggiewinkles, fluff balls and so on.
Cassie’s real name is Cassiopeia but she usually gets called Cass-cass or Cass-cat. Lyra, her daughter, is just Lyra. Sometimes Cassie is Lovely Girl (not in a Father Jack accent) and Lyra is Baby Cat (she’s fully grown, but not as huge as Cassie).
Our previous cat, Mick, seemed to attract many more nicknames. Mickle Pickle. Father Fluffybottom (another Father Ted reference!). Precious Mig (no idea where that came from). Miggle Moggle Cake (Spike Milligan reference). Amica Mea (emphasis on “mic” - from the Song of Solomon).
Monet (formerly Captain Fuzzywinks), will also respond if I just call him Fluff. He was a really strange cat and always wanted to bite us, has never like pats until the last year. I'm very pleased that this week as he actually jumped up and tried to get into my lap. He's never done that before.
We've never called Marcelline by her full name, she's always just been Marcie. Previous cats have been Harry, Spiky, Barney and Sooty.
No, she’s the usual Aby, so she’s ginger. I only realised that after we had named her. Our previous usual was Gwenllian - Gwennie, so wanted a Welsh name, and so called her Arianwen without thinking about what it meant.
We've always inherited, foster/adopted or had rescue moggies so they've always come prenamed (elvis, mitch, noah and moses (last 2 from a non religious original owner!)) This hasn't stopped numerous (sometimes) affectionate nicknames - the furry terror, fuzzface (for you guitar players), flossie mcdougle, various variations on tiddles etc
I think we should rename our cat That Cat because that's what he gets called. I mean, not to his face, but cats couldn't give a monkeys what names humans give them.
Which reminds me - apparently it's really hard to estimate cats' intelligence because while you can train a dog or a parrot or a goldfish even to perform, so you know what they can learn to do, cats just won't co-operate. To a dog, it's "hey, I've figured out they want me to bark when I smell that grassy stuff, so hey, that makes me a Good Dog! Woof" whereas with cats its sort of "apparently they like it when I rear up on my hind legs when they make that particular noise. If I fancy a Dreamie I might humour them. Sometimes. If I'm in the mood"
We had an African grey parrot (Pompeii) who came with that name, as I inherited her from my grandfather. We also had a greenwing macaw named Peach (Macchu Picchu) from similar character in the book So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane. We didn't intend to name them both after archaeological sites, it just turned out that way.
My favourite example of this was when my cousin and I gave our new, tiny, very scared rescue kitten a name that we hoped would inspire her to great feats in her intended role as mouse-catcher. The first time we took her to the vet, my cousin had the kitten zipped up in the front of her jacket and cuddled close, but with one glimpse (or perhaps sniff) of a waiting room with several big dogs in it, the kitten shot up our of the safe enclosure, jumped first to my cousin's shoulder and then scrambled straight up the still-open front door to crouch, trembling, on top of the door, uttering tiny mews of terror. While I then had to say to the receptionist with a straight face, "We're here with Terminator."
We adopted our dog from a rescue facility. She had belonged to a French -Canadian family, and her name was Cherie. We changed it to Sherry.but we called her many other names. My most common name foe her as Mutt-Wut
Our cat was Whisky, because she was black and white.
The dog had the very ordinary name of Suzy, but she became known as the Puppy On A Spring (Sandie Shaw fans will remember why) because of the exuberant way she would greet us when we came home.
Later on my mother adopted a teeny tiny miniature Yorkie, who became known as the Baked Bean because I was making a fuss of her one day and called her "Bay-beee!" and my slightly deaf mother thought I said baked bean.
As a child my parents adopted a black and white kitten that was already named Cassandra but shortened to Cassie. She had a sister called Cleopatra shortened for Cleo. The person we got Cassie from kept Cleo.
As teenagers my sister persuaded us to get a kitten when her friend's cat had kittens. She was half red tabby tom cat, a quarter siamese and a quarter unknown. She was named Tuppence by my mum and known as Tuppy though occassionally would be called Tuppence Tornado Tiddliewinks. Tornado because she regularly had the zoomies when a kitten and Tiddliewink because she could jump. It was not unusual to find her sitting on top of the door. Though she took her colouring from her father, her yowl and her affection was definitely from her Siamese Grandparent.
We also had gold fish called Goldie and Patch. Well several called Patch as they kept jumping out of the fish tank.
The "placeholder" names for my two cats (sisters, 4 months old at the time) at the shelter were Ramen (grey and white) and Curry (calico); I decided to name them, respectively, Stormy and Sunny (the calico has a lot of orange), because it fit well, and I live in Florida. Cubby (my partner, whom some Shipmates may remember as QuakerCub) always loved us living back in my home state of Florida, and we wanted to get cats before he passed, so Florida-themed seemed especially apropos. They're now about two years old. +heart
While I was walking down a side road yesterday, a neighbour called to ask if I wanted to come in and meet his newly adopted two-year-old bull mastiff. "His name is Jumper," the proud owner said.
I sheepishly made an excuse and said I'd pop in another time. Jumper by name and jumper by nature: I've been flattened by enthusiastic gargantuan puppies before.
My husband, who is Vietnamese and has a wicked sense of humor, once proposed we bring out new chihuahua puppy back from California in my pocket on the plane. If airport security spotted the pup, I was to tell them he was an in-flight snack.
I was thinking about this thread yesterday and remembered meeting someone years ago who had two cats called Torteye and Torah and I commented on what pretty names they were. She then told me they also used to have Puddy and Tat so I understood.
I was thinking about this thread yesterday and remembered meeting someone years ago who had two cats called Torteye and Torah and I commented on what pretty names they were. She then told me they also used to have Puddy and Tat so I understood.
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On the other hand, I was talking to someone last night who has had three Yorkies in 26 years and named them Buttons One, Buttons Two and Buttons Three.
Hmmm .... could be tricky. I also answer to that name!
Joey is dead, long live Joey.
My favourite example of this was when my cousin and I gave our new, tiny, very scared rescue kitten a name that we hoped would inspire her to great feats in her intended role as mouse-catcher. The first time we took her to the vet, my cousin had the kitten zipped up in the front of her jacket and cuddled close, but with one glimpse (or perhaps sniff) of a waiting room with several big dogs in it, the kitten shot up our of the safe enclosure, jumped first to my cousin's shoulder and then scrambled straight up the still-open front door to crouch, trembling, on top of the door, uttering tiny mews of terror. While I then had to say to the receptionist with a straight face, "We're here with Terminator."
I named her the very original name of ‘Tiddles’.
When I brought her in my grandma jumped on the chair and shouted “take it out, take it out”. She thought it was a mouse! My mum sent me up and down the streets knocking on doors to check if anyone had lost a kitten, nobody had.
Tiddles lived a long and healthy life and spent a lot of time on grandma’s knee. She was an amazing mouser and would line up their tails on the lawn, having eaten the rest of the mice.
We adopted a 9 year old cat from the shelter. No way were we going to change her name. My very manly husband said, "You are telling me I am going to have to go to the Vet with a cat named Sweetie Pie."
I must have told this 15 times, but aged 17 I was out in the back yard in blissful awe of Saturn's rings thru' me telescope, when a querulous, questioning voice nearby said 'Twinkle, twinkle. Twinkle, twinkle. I stood bolt upright, as did the hair on the back of me neck. It was an old lady neighbour calling her cat.
Their "official"registered names relate to the fact that they were born at the end of August 2023, under the "blue moon" so they needed celestial names. And their breeder is a Schubert fan. So Bob's "official" name is Night Brightness and Sparky's "official" name is Divine Sparks. And Bob's short name was just his breeders shorthand after Robert Tear, the tenor, whose friends knew him as "Bob'. The name sort of stuck...
The middle aged cat came with her name, which is Suleika (also the title of a Schubert song). We call her Suki.
And the senior cat is called Jai...which is not the name of a Schubert song (or any other song, for that matter). It is a Thai word, he being a cat whose origins are in Thailand, and I cannot recall what it means. Planet, maybe?
However, she soon got nicknames. When she was good (and she really did want to be a Good Girl) it was Kim, the Little Friend of All the World, and when she was bad it was Imp of Satan!
She was, of course, the Best Dog Ever.
Current dog: Cocoa. Because she's brown.
The first to join us was Marcie, she is named for Marcelline the Vampire Queen in Adventure Time. Rest of the family were quite taken with that animated series so I agreed.
When we went to the shelter for our second cat, I thought he might not be suitable for our family being a longhair and Cheery Husband has asthma. Anyway this cat took a shine to husband and just adores him. Cat came with the name Captain Fuzzywinks. Obviously I was not going to be calling that from the back door.
As we already had Marcie a shorthair tabby and our new adoptee was a longhaired tabby, I thought another M name would be a goer, so he became Monet and took to his new name very quickly.
Marcie is very affectionate but not bright at all. Monet knows his name and has trained us to supply treats and take him for walks on his lead. During covid lockdowns husband built a shelf above his desk as Monet would come for a treat and a pat and settle on the shelf for the rest of the morning while husband worked. Now that husband has had to return to the office, Monet is very put out and still looks for him to be at his desk. Husband has to go to room to give treats before leaving for the office to keep Monet happy, even now.
So on the suggestion of daughter's then boyfriend the kitten became Molly. (I think he had a dog called Molly). Since then she gets called a variety of names none of which seem to bother her at all; Molly, Dolly, Dolly-bear, Mollif, Dol-Dols, Mollifer, Dollifer, Furry-Features, The Animal etc etc.
Anyone else have multiple names for their pet?
We currently have two guinea pigs, which my sons instantly named Lily and Violet. I call them Lily-Lou and Violetta for long, but they mostly get referred to as the piggies, piggiewinkles, fluff balls and so on.
Our previous cat, Mick, seemed to attract many more nicknames. Mickle Pickle. Father Fluffybottom (another Father Ted reference!). Precious Mig (no idea where that came from). Miggle Moggle Cake (Spike Milligan reference). Amica Mea (emphasis on “mic” - from the Song of Solomon).
We've never called Marcelline by her full name, she's always just been Marcie. Previous cats have been Harry, Spiky, Barney and Sooty.
Please tell me Annie is silvery-white
Which reminds me - apparently it's really hard to estimate cats' intelligence because while you can train a dog or a parrot or a goldfish even to perform, so you know what they can learn to do, cats just won't co-operate. To a dog, it's "hey, I've figured out they want me to bark when I smell that grassy stuff, so hey, that makes me a Good Dog! Woof" whereas with cats its sort of "apparently they like it when I rear up on my hind legs when they make that particular noise. If I fancy a Dreamie I might humour them. Sometimes. If I'm in the mood"
I love this; how did I miss this?
It was Dorothy Parker’s pet canary
I'd actually forgotten I posted this story!
What a good little cat she was. I still miss her, and I normally think of myself as more of a dog person, except for Terminator.
The dog had the very ordinary name of Suzy, but she became known as the Puppy On A Spring (Sandie Shaw fans will remember why) because of the exuberant way she would greet us when we came home.
Later on my mother adopted a teeny tiny miniature Yorkie, who became known as the Baked Bean because I was making a fuss of her one day and called her "Bay-beee!" and my slightly deaf mother thought I said baked bean.
As teenagers my sister persuaded us to get a kitten when her friend's cat had kittens. She was half red tabby tom cat, a quarter siamese and a quarter unknown. She was named Tuppence by my mum and known as Tuppy though occassionally would be called Tuppence Tornado Tiddliewinks. Tornado because she regularly had the zoomies when a kitten and Tiddliewink because she could jump. It was not unusual to find her sitting on top of the door. Though she took her colouring from her father, her yowl and her affection was definitely from her Siamese Grandparent.
We also had gold fish called Goldie and Patch. Well several called Patch as they kept jumping out of the fish tank.
While I was walking down a side road yesterday, a neighbour called to ask if I wanted to come in and meet his newly adopted two-year-old bull mastiff. "His name is Jumper," the proud owner said.
I sheepishly made an excuse and said I'd pop in another time. Jumper by name and jumper by nature: I've been flattened by enthusiastic gargantuan puppies before.
To be followed by Idid and Isaw?