Naming Pet Cats - A Cat Called Sheep

One of my cats is large, white and fluffy and is called Sheep. Well actually, she's called Cindy but mostly she gets called Sheep. Not that this makes any difference to Cindy who doesn't answer to either name unless food is involved. My friend Kate came to visit us one weekend and saw a large, fluffy white thing on the back lawn. "Ooh look - sheep!" said Kate. Kate was 39 years old at the time, but in her defence she's the daughter of a sheep farmer and automatically identifies all fluffy white things seen against a backdrop of grass as sheep.

The naming of cats, according to T S Eliot, is a difficult matter. A cat needs three names - the name that the family use, a peculiar and more dignified name that never belongs to more than one cat and a name that no human research will ever discover - the name upon which the cat himself will spend long hours meditating. It also needs a nickname, usually one which is bestowed upon it by someone other than its owner. Eliot sort of forgot this essential fact of cat husbandry.

I am a volunteer at a cat shelter and one of the more mentally strenuous duties is to find names for all those cats. You work through books of cat names and baby names (twice), exhaust the possibilities of flower names (courtesy of a seed catalogue) and all of the poets (some yield enough names for a whole litter e.g. Peter Bysshe Shelley or Samuel Taylor Coleridge) and most Shakespeare and Dickens characters are already taken (unless indecent sounding). The vet vetoes anything out of Tolkein and the names of Russian composers due to spelling and pronunciation difficulties. Then some friend comes along, spots a cat and says "Oooh! Sheep!" and the name sticks. Except for a couple of problems - the name has stuck to your cat who already had a perfectly good name (which it never answered to) and none of the shelter kittens (who need names) look like sheep.

My vet also had a tendency to nickname some of my cats. Scrapper had a perfectly good workaday name which aptly described his physical characteristics - or in his case - what was left of his physical characteristics after 10 years of living rough. Not only was his name perfectly suitable, he even answered to it which is a bit of a bonus since normally only dogs will answer when you call while cats will take a message and get back to you if they remember. He went into the surgery as Scrapper. During a mild altercation with the vet, he came out of the surgery called 'Wozzack' (it's a mild insult, pronounced 'wozz-ick") or to be more precise 'C'm 'ere wozzack'. From that day on, he answered to both Scrapper and 'c'm 'ere wozzack'.

This is a normal phenomenon as far as cat-lovers are concerned. No, not altercations with vets (though that's probably pretty normal too), the spontaneous nicknaming of cats, usually by someone other than the owner.

Author Terry Pratchett (P'Terry to his fans, showing that its not only cats who acquire nicknames) helpfully suggests that a cat has a variety of different names for a variety of occasions. For example, there's the name used when you tread on it and a very different name for when it is the only animal able to help enquiries pertaining to a pungent puddle on the carpet. It has further names for when the children are giving it a third degree cuddle and for when it causes major catastrophes. While it may initially 'look like a Winifred', as the years go by it finds itself being called 'Meepo' or 'Ratbag'. According to Pratchett, in his book 'The Unadulterated Cat', Vincent Mountjoy Froufrou Poundstretcher IV soon ends up as 'Mumthere'ssomethingORRIBLEunderthebed'! Never, says Pratchett, give a cat a name you wouldn't mind shouting out in a strained, worried voice around midnight.

How many cats are actually called by their given names a year or two later? Well okay, they are called by their given names during vet check-ups because that's the name on the computer (even if you do have to rack your brains to remember it yourself) unless of course the vet himself re-christens it after a mild altercation.

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