Still Meowing And Roaring
We have the sweetest cats ever. They are dogs in cats' bodies, really. We don't have people use the doorbell at our house. Before they can get that far, we're already answering the door. Why? Well simply because we've known they were there thanks to the welcome wagon that ran to the front door and started meowing the second someone started approaching our house. It's sweet.
Well, most of the time. It's not so sweet when I'm trying to write something and cats are laying on my arms so that I can move my fingers but not much else. But it is sweet when I walk in to the wee ones' rooms and see them curled around their heads or snuggled up in their arms. The wee ones love Meow and Roar (named by Mister Man when he was just barely three and that's a post in itself), and they love hearing stories about the cats I had growing up.
This weekend, the wee ones were begging my mom to tell them new stories about my cats growing up. My mom launched into a story about Caesarette. I quickly interrupted to note that her name was actually Caesar. My mom looked at my blankly and continued on her way calling my cat Caesarette. I flinched inside, but I've fought this battle unsuccessfully since I was about seven or so. Caesar was my cat. She was my very first cat that my mom allowed me to get when I was three or so. I named her after a friend who had a cat named Caesar because I thought all cats were named Caesar at the time. Perhaps I was only two. Once we discovered she was a girl, my mom deplored the name and tried switching it to Caesarette to make it sound more feminine. I didn't get that until I was seven or so and before then just continued to call her Caesar.
The next story my mom told involved my next cat Copper. And my mom insisted that she was called Copper because our neighborhood had the word "copper" in it. Ummm no, she was Copper because she was copper colored. My mom changed her name midway through the story to "Copper Top" which was what she called my cat for most of her life.
Which got me thinking. Of course.
There was also the dog we had growing up. We named her pumpkin because we got her the week of Halloween. My mom remembers it because she was so cute and little and Pumpkin was more of an endearment. Her name was quickly shortened in their minds to Punky. And she was Punky to them for the majority of her life, though I still called her Pumpkin.
For some reason, my parents - and my mom in particular - seem to change around the names of my pets to better fit their ideas of the pet. My mom couldn't have a girl cat with a boy name, for example. The first pets we've had that haven't had their names changed and altered are Meow and Roar. And I'm not fully sure why that is...
So is it just me? Am I the only one who has one name for my pets that morphs into something else or have your pets all started out with one moniker but is no longer the name your pet answers to?
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5 comments:
I remember a particularly ugly tantrum I had when my step-dad kept calling my black Spaniel, Bear. Her name was Bailey. Totally ticked me off. He only called her Bailey after that.
Every single one of my childhood cats was named Keycha, except for Mixa that was named after her mother. And when I was little I thought all cats were girls and all dogs were boys. Which may explain a lot of my confusion now LOL
It wasn't until I was grown that I started calling my cats by nicknames other than their given names. Rhonda, my formerly feral, uppity girl answered to Rhonda, rhondabonda, and princess. She was already named Rhonda when I acquired her, Princess was MUCH more fitting, as she was quite the diva.
My current cats are Bow Bits (aka sugarbooger, girlcat, punkinbutt & bow); Mollie (aka shrimpa or shortcat, though since she's deaf, she doesn't HEAR anything I say); and Trinity (aka trin, baby boy, shrimpy, li'lcat & fatness). Trinity is a first generation, non-standard Dwelf, and his breeder named him (the dwelf is a trio of genetic mutations: short legs, hairless & curled ears, Trin is short with curled ears). Actually he answers to just about anything, including my roommate's dog's and cats' names, as well as his sisters. Pretty much he thinks anyone who is talking is talking to him, and therefore he should go visit with them...
Great names for cats--Meow and Roar! Three of our (Jerry's and my) dogs had mathematicians' names--Cauchy, Pascal, Newton. But then we also had Belle and Rip. Dogs from my childhood were MacBeth and Cassandra because my younger sister was into Shakespearean plays. None of our pets names ever were changed by anyone. We've never had an indoor cat because Jerry will not allow pets in the house, though we had a stray cat that hung out at our house and caught gophers, mice and lizards and was also very friendly. Jerry called it "Almost" because it was almost our cat and I called it Kiki. The best part (to Jerry) was we never spent a penny on it. I just remembered that we had four kittens, one after another, named Rocky, Rocky 2, Rocky3 and Rocky 4. They lived outside, so each one disappeared after not very long--probably eaten by a coyote or a mountain lion. Ok...tmi
Copper was a great cat and feral was cool as well
- your old friend.
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