Question of the Day: Saturday, January 4

When I decided to adopt a kitty, I knew I wanted a male, so I made a list of potential names (same as I did when I was pregnant!). This was my list:

• Preston - After John Preston (Equilibrium character... I LOVE the dystopian genre). Eliminated because if I should ever have another son (unlikely), I will probably name him Preston.
• Emerson - After Ralph Waldo Emerson.
• Ramsay - After Chef Gordon Ramsay (love that guy), and I could use the nickname Rameses, which is my school mascot.
• Oliver - A name I've always liked for cats and the name of a very dear friend who I rarely get to see.

I ended up going with Oliver because that personal touch really tipped it for me.

So, from where do you draw inspiration when naming your pets?

Well, I'm a total bore. I used the same names that the shelter gave these 3 cats. They actually suit them pretty well! Gadget is a muscular goofy oaf of a cat, but lovable, much like Sloth from the movie The Goonies. Mason is a sleek pretty boy that puts on airs and knows he's pretty. Julie is a small girly girl of a cat; she prances when she comes up to me if I called her.

My last 2 cats (RIP) I gave names from movies or movie stars (Scarlet and Brigitte) but my then boyfriend kept calling them Black and Grey so that stuck. My mom named the cats during my childhood.

 I was blessed  the day I brought home a tiny, tabby kitten almost 8 years ago after meeting a guy at a subway stop, who had her in a duffel bag. It was May of 2006 we found each other! I picked up this tiny kitten and she hugged me, wouldn't let go. Brought her home and after very little research found her name Maia, after the Roman /Greek goddess of Spring, rebirth, new life...............................

Mogli was such a little imp that I'd pretty much decided to name him Kobold or Goblin by the time I got him home from the shelter. At nine months, though, he knew the name Mo(w)gli, so we kept it. It's a very common name for cats in Germany (and spelled without the "w", as otherwise it would be pronounced "Mov - gli").

Ok here goes:

I have no biological children, just 8 really awesome felines. None have there names from the shelter but one is close.

Brian became my Ryan because my Jim has a buddy named Brian who I don't care for so I kept it close to his shelter name.

Momma Pooch is 20 years old that I adopted when she was 17 her former owner just called her the Mom cat as where she used to live she had so many liters and the owner kept 2 of her kittens. Yes she was also not fixed when I adopted her. So off to the vet for blood work and a good fixing. Now at 20 she answers to Momma Pooch because she has a cute mug.

Virgil Cain got his name from "The Band" song "the night they drove Dixie down".

Matthew we just liked that name.

Rachel was named for a super filly racehorse whose name was Rachel Alexandra.

Sophie was named after family friends whose last name is Sofi.

Murphy we just liked the name but first he was called Eugene then Ian then Andrew and finally Murphy.

Sally I just always liked that name for a girl.

Frannie was named after my favorite character in The Stand by Stephen King (or I should say, my favorite character at the time, 16 years ago)

Wheezie was named after Wheezie Jefferson (can't remember why...I think we were trying out lots of different names and it stuck. I do remember that she didn't have a name for quite a while because we couldn't decide on one)

Bob was named by my husband. She was a very skittish stray and we thought she was a boy. Oops. Guess he thought she looked like a Bob. She is more often called Princess because she behaves like one.

Sammy was another stray named by my husband. He had the funniest looking aggressive posture towards all the other strays in the neighborhood: head down, wide stance in front...and then he would charge at them. He was Sammy the Bull, now he is my sweet little dude and mostly called Doodles or Doodlebug.

Pooper. Oh, Pooper. She was a stray we found sitting on the curb at a Wendy's drive thru when she was just tiny. She looked like she was waiting for a bus. Just happened to have a crate in the trunk and it took me 20 minutes and half a burger to catch her. The manager said they had been trying to catch her all day. We were 'going to find her a good home.' I really meant it this time! We didn't want to get attached to her, so we decided not to name her. When she came out of her quarantine in the laundry room, we started referring to her as the little S***. Because she was one. She has always been very, very busy and a bit of a troublemaker, especially around my other girls, who are all little old ladies who only want to nap all day. Pooper wasn't having any of that! I was afraid the 'name' would stick, so we started to call her the little Pooper instead. And then that stuck. Oops, again.

Casper came to us with his name.  He was nearly 10, and responded to it so there was no way we would think of changing it.  I keep forgetting to ask his prior owner (a good friend) what made him name him that.

Cocoa, on the other hand.  Ugh.  That was tough. The name the rescue group gave her was the name of an area in the town she was found in - a town which is not particularly nice for that matter.  We really disliked that name, plus it was nearly the same name if you switched some letters around that I use for other online endeavors.  My partner just could not wrap his head around calling her that, since it rhymed with mine and he thought it would be too confusing.

We had her for a couple of weeks before we settled on Cocoabean although we just call her Cocoa now.  We went through SO many names, but in the end, she reminded us  of a little chocolate or coffee bean (both of which we both love).  I think we both would have liked a more interesting one but we finally got tired of throwing out possibilities after her being with us for such along amount of time without a name, and settled on that one. It seems to suit her, and she now (most of the time lol) seems to know that the name is hers.

My inspiration in naming my kitty was her colors.  Autumn is a tortie with the colors of the Fall so it was easy for me to just name her Autumn.  My beloved rainbow kitty was named after the weather of the day I adopted her, Misty was her name as a slight mist was coming down while bringing her home.

The kitties actually named themselves.

Jed got his name from Jed Bartlett. I think it suits him very well, he has that presidential look about him.

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How many kitties you know cross their legs???

As an aside, how it is decided who will post questions of the day for that day?

Fhi09 said:

As an aside, how it is decided who will post questions of the day for that day?

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I think (but not totally sure) that there are seven members/moderators assigned a day of the week. Mani normally posts the Saturday question, but she's away for the day and asked for a volunteer a couple of days ago. So that's why I posted today.

Good question @LaraLove    

l usually have male cats, and typically just pick boys' names.

Bretten is an exception. He's a Cornish Rex, so l wanted to give him a British name. l thought of Breton but didn't like the spelling so l altered it.

My last Siamese cat was named Thai, for the obvious reason.

And the other l can think of was the cat we brought to Canada with us. She was one of our very few females. We thought of naming her Tigger, but since she was female, we altered it to Tigga, which in my northern English accent sounds exactly like Tigger.

Fhi09 said:

How many kitties you know cross their legs???

As an aside, how it is decided who will post questions of the day for that day?

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Autumn does it quite often but I don't have a pic of it.  She crosses her front paws and then lays her head down to sleep.  I think it's so cute.

Andrya said:

 
Good question @LaraLove    

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Thanks!   

I was never really a fan of the name Angel, but between when & how he came to me, it was more of what he was/ is.

I tried other names, & nothing really seemed to fit,   (& the embarrassing fact that I thought he was a she, the first year or so   )  

In hindsight, I now think, hmm, maybe I should have changed it at least to "Angelo," close enough to still recognize, but I never did.  

Had I known he was a boy from the beginning, maybe I would have named him Leo, sense he's kind of that color, & I'm a Leo. 

Oh well, he's my little angel, he is a very sweet boy!

When I adopted Ruby from the shelter, I wanted to change the name they gave her (Josephine) and wanted something that related to her colour.   So I googled names for orange cats and narrowed it down to a few and Ruby was my favourite.    Other contenders were Autumn, Peaches and Pumpkin.

BTW, anyone know if she will eventually learn her new name?   She's 2 or 3 years old, and I got her in November.

My cats are Atari and Fawkes. Atari got her name from behaving the way she did when I brought her home, and Fawkes got her name from her looks and behavior. 

When Atari came home with me she stayed in her crate for three days and refused to move even when I took the lid off. What eventually got her out was the sound of Pacman on my computer. She was curious and came to see what the 'wakka wakka' noise was and began trying to swat the ghosts on the screen. Now because she's a girl we didn't want to call her Pacman, but the Atari was the first system to allow you to play Pacman at home, so Atari became her name.

Fawkes is a longhair orange Tabby who's tail fur puffs out like a fox, she's wicked fast like one too and she doesn't 'meow', instead she squeaks and occasionally 'barks' like a fox. The reason her name changed to Fawkes instead of fox was because of how skinny she was when we found her outside trying to eat birdseed. After handing her over to the SPCA and later adopting her when her owner could not be located she became perfectly healthy in a matter of two weeks. She rose from the ashes like a Phoenix, and so Fawkes the phoenix. ;3

We have a variety of inspiration with names.
When we were kids the 4 of us named our 2 many things, including Aslan and Feneris Ulf.
But mom always defaulted to Big Kitty, and Little Kitty. After Little Kitty grew bigger, she defaulted to yellow kitty and spotted kitty. So boring mom!

My first cat was Lucie, after Lucie in the Charley Brown cartoon. She was a big meow cat. She sounded just like the cartoon.

Shortly after moving n to a new house, my DH discovered a cat was sleeping on a car seat in the garage. She seemed friendly but she was covered in little sores and had a lot of fur loss. It was take her to the vet, or the pound. Well, duh, vet it was. I was worried she had mange, but it turned out she was allergic to fleas. She was pretty instantly dubbed Scruffy. We think she lived at the house before, because she didn't do the "new place sniff" and our cats just accepted her like they had always known her.

We started caring for a beautiful long haired Van patterned neighbor cat after her collar disappeared and she started to look dirty and underfed. It turned out she was pregnant. We never figured out what happened to her owners. She had a little dilute Calico spot by one ear, that looked like a hair bow on a little girl. She became Bow Bow,

Her Kittens were Tabster (a tabby) Cow, (black and white like a Holstein cow) Kneadmyster (she loved to knead people, blankets, etc). Hicclepup, she had a lot of hiccups for some reason, and Domino because he had tabby spots on a white ground and looked like a dice or a domino. We kept Cow and Domino. (Domino was later hit by a car to our great sadness)

The next tiny kitten that adopted us was a little Pip Squeak which morphed to Pippy.

We had Cow, Bow Bow, Scruffy and Pippi till they all passed in the 15 to 18 year range.

Pippi was the last, and shortly after she passed we decided we couldn't live without a cat and adopted a calico from Paws. Her shelter name was Rags...UHHGgg it totally didn't fit her. She was a little southern belle so Lillianna Underfoot seemed to fit. Mostly she gets called Hopple Popple because she loved to do that arched, bouncing, sideways, hop thing when playing.

Our boys were named Domino and Pip by their foster mom, who knew our original Domino and Pip. She said we could change their names, but they suited fine. We added to them and have Domino Toretto because his brashness reminded us of Vince Torreto from the Fast and Furious movie series. Pip became Pippin Theodore because it suited, he is a tidy little man. (The shelter hadn't recorded her names, so they named them Bean and Bacon,which were actually pretty cute)

Sophia's shelter name was Electra, but it didn't suit. My DH and our other partner decided Sophia Maria fit.

Needless to say, they all have multiple names, but Underfoot describes them well.

The cats will tell us their names....usually fairly quickly. Sometimes it's because of the way they look, sometimes it's because of how they act, sometimes it's simply so easy that we figure it out right away.

BooBoo - he looked like a tiny bear cub. Rick called him BooBoo from day one. He's also known as BuddyBoo

Ms. Pepe - she is a split-faced tortie (and she reminded Rick of Pepe le Pew, kind of, with the way her stripe is on top of her head). But since she's a girl, she became Ms. Pepe. And it's Ms. not Miss.

Amber Louise - originally known as Marmalade, but the name didn't fit her at all. She became Amber the first time I saw her and the Louise was added at the vet when she went down for her first check-up (even before I brought her home).

Mollipop - she was born at the animal hospital and didn't have a name yet. I first saw her when she was about 3-4 weeks old. And as much as I wanted her to be a Bastet, she did not look like Bastet. No way, it just wasn't happening. I had just come back from spending time with her at the vet and I was doing laundry and singing, "Lollipop, Lollipop!" only it came out "Mollipop". I stopped dead halfway down the basement steps, dropped the basket of laundry I was carrying and called the vet. "Her name is Mollipop!" The next night when I went down to see her, I said, "Hey there, Mollipop" and she started to purr. So even before she came home at 7 weeks, she had her name. She is also known as Molli-Stop because when she was a wee kitten, I said "Molli, stop!" quite often. 

Tabitha/Tabby - I walked over to the neighbor to feed this tiny little striped tabby with the cutest white paws you ever saw. The neighbor guy said they weren't going to feed her, so I took her home. On the way over to the house, she was just purring away. And when I fed her, she hopped into my lap and purred, "Tabby" to me.  She was Tabby pretty much from the first minute I saw her. Rick was a little put-out that she was Tabby; he said we could have chosen a better name. But honestly? She's a Tabby, she really is.

Muffin - she was my mother's cat, so Mom named her. I don't know how she got to be a Muffin and I wouldn't have called her that, but that's her name. She's also known The Muffin-ator because she really attacks her food. 

Mollipop and Muffin are also known as the M & Ms. 

BooBoo, Ms. Pepe, and Amber Louise are our last remaining RugCats (it's hard to believe that at one time, we had eight RugCats).

Mollipop, Tabby, and Muffin are our Three Meowsketeers

rubysmama said:

 
When I adopted Ruby from the shelter, I wanted to change the name they gave her (Josephine) and wanted something that related to her colour.   So I googled names for orange cats and narrowed it down to a few and Ruby was my favourite.    Other contenders were Autumn, Peaches and Pumpkin.

BTW, anyone know if she will eventually learn her new name?   She's 2 or 3 years old, and I got her in November.

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I'm not completely sure every cat learns to recognize their names.  I know for sure Casper knows his, but Cocoa is another story.  We've had her a year now (she's a rescue), and there are some days when I'm fairly certain she knows it, and other days she gets this blank, glazed look on her and turns the other way when we say her name.  Either she's ignoring us or honestly isn't one to care about what we call her as long as we don't call her late to dinner lol (sorry, I could not resist saying that!).