NAME THAT CAT!

I'm terrible at thinking of good names. As some of you may know, I've been known to dabble in novel writing and the thing I'm worst at (among many other things I'm sure) is thinking up decent names for my characters. I've changed some names so often that I sometimes forget what name I'm currently using for some of them.

The same thing applies to cat names. I even bought a (cheap remaindered) book of cat names which contained over a thousand plus their meanings. Every time I've had to name a cat I've checked it out and never once used any of them.

Right now I have four kittens out of five in need of names. The fifth and the one I've had the longest is called Tiny because she was the smallest of the litter. But kittens grow up and stop being Tiny (and stop being, as someone else called her, Wobbles).

To backtrack for a moment, let's look at the four adult cats I have and their names. There's Fifi (fee-fee -as in: I'm a diva, give me the money) the black and white female. Actually this is a rare example of a fairly decent name for her. Check the previous post for her photo and tell me she isn't a Fifi. I didn't name Aelfric (ale-frick -as in: give me a fri...oh work it out for yourself) the pedigree British short hair, though I tried several which didn't fit, instead settling for the name I found on his micro-chipping certificate. Actually I quite liked it. It's Anglo-saxon in origin and there was a history-writing bishop in the tenth century with the same name and he does look just like a history-writing tenth century bishop, doesn't he? Aoife (ee-fa -as in:...no, nothing springs to mind) came about because I heard it in the news recently and remembered that a contestant on a show called So You Wanna Be Julie Andrews or Fagin (or something like that) called Aoife. (Hmm, I may be defeating my own argument that I'm crap at names.) Okay, and lastly there's Tiger (tie-grrr) the long-haired tabby to whom I gave the same name as a long-haired tabby who lived with me and Susan a few years ago and was knocked down and killed at age 3. So, hardly an original name. Mind you, I was at the vet's yesterday with him and another  customer commented admiringly that he did look just like a tiger so maybe not original but at least appropriate.

Back to the unnamed kittens. I did think of calling Aoife's two small kittens Maeve and Fiona in keeping with their mother's name but they don't do anything for me so I'm still pondering. Cait and Clodagh perhaps?  Umm, Cait maybe, Clodagh no. You see what I mean?

Then there's the tabby twins. I was talking about cat names in the vets a few days ago and someone mentioned, in a completely different context, Catterick (this being a North Yorkshire town which is home to an army garrison). And I thought: Catrick. A pun on Cattrick and also Cat and Rick.

And then I thought: if I'm going to call one of them Catrick, then I should surely call the other kitten Catron as in....

...the end of this shaggy kitten story.