A Cat by Any Other Name

Suzanne Stowe's Showshoe cat Chloe is commonly called Wee Wee.

I find it interesting that many cats I know have more than one name. They have their given name, chosen by their owner when the kitty first joins a household. For example, my Snowshoe is named Chloe.  But that isn’t what she’s called on a regular basis, unless she is naughty.

Chloe is most often called Wee Wee because that’s the sound she makes when she talks, and she talks a lot.  But she is also called Binks, Mrs Binkerton, Wee Wee Pembertini and Wee Wee Witherspoon. 

Then there is Zooey.  She was named after one of my favorite books, "Franny and Zooey" by J. D. Salinger.  Her name has been modified to Zoebutter and Mrs. Butterworth. She responds to all three names and will come running when I use any of these names. 

Ramsing, my Siamese male, is most often called Baby. He is small and sounds like a baby when he talks. Sometimes he is called Himselves or Rama. 

I’m not the only one who has multiple names for their cats. In fact, T. S. Eliot wrote a poem called “The Naming of Cats” that addressed this very issue. Mr. Eliot felt cats must have three different names:  the one the family uses daily, a name more peculiar and more dignified, and a name that only the cat himself knows.

Bucky is the nickname for Buster, a pet-sitting client.

If you check out the cat profiles on CatChannel.com, you’ll see that most kitties have nicknames and some are as unusual as the ones my kitties have.

Some of my pet-sitting clients also give their kitties more than one name.  Right now I’m taking care of a handsome orange-and-white kitty whose given name is Buster.  But nobody calls him Buster.  He is addressed as Bucky by all who know him well.  And the name fits him well.

Click here to see the top cat names of 2007. But my guess is that these kitties also have a peculiar nickname.  What are your cat’s second and third names?