Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Naming your New Kitty the Right Way
You do not name a cat. You propose a name, and the cat spends the rest of its life amending it. — YNOT!
Three weeks ago a kind soul took in a rescued kitten, and as of this writing the kitten has no name. She calls her “baby.” She calls her “kitty.” She went before the public — as people now do — and asked for recommendations, and five hundred and ten people showed up to help, which tells you that naming a cat is one of the few remaining subjects the whole world will drop everything to argue about.
Some folks would call three weeks without a name a failure. I call it an audition period, and a wise one. Because a name given on the first day is a guess wearing a tie. A name given on the twenty-first day has evidence behind it.
THE NAME YOU PICK VS. THE NAME THAT STICKS
Every cat carries two names. There is the official name, the one on the vet records, the one you announce to visitors with a straight face. And there is the name that actually gets used at 6 a.m. when you are standing in the kitchen in your bathrobe, and it is never the same name.
Consider a cat of my acquaintance — by way of the neighborhood reports — christened Nyla. A fine name. Dignified. Nyla is also known as Bunny. And NylaBean. And NyNy. And Honey Bunny. That is not a cat with a name. That is a cat with a government and several departments.
This is not a defect in the system. This is the system. You pick the name the way a town picks a mayor — formally, hopefully, and with no real control over what happens next. The name that sticks picks itself, usually in the kitchen, usually by accident, usually while you are saying something you did not plan to say to a cat at all.
HOW A CAT HEARS HER NAME (IT ISN’T SPELLING)
Here is a comfort to everyone still stuck on “kitty”: your cat does not know what a name is. She knows a sound, a tone, and — most importantly — what usually happens after the sound.
Cats answer to tone, not syllables. The same word said in the dinner voice gets a parade; said in the you-are-on-the-counter voice, it gets an empty room. This is why a cat can be renamed at practically any age without a crisis. She learns the new call the way she learned the old one: dinner first, name second, philosophy later.
Which is also why the old two-syllable rule of thumb exists. Short names with a lift at the end — the kind that come out of your mouth like a little whistle — carry across a house better than a four-syllable opera. “Biscuit” travels. “Bartholomew” arrives out of breath. But take it as a rule of thumb, not a law of physics. Generations of cats have answered to “Kitty,” which is less a name than a job description, and they have answered just fine.
NAMING BY LOOKS, BY CRIME, AND BY PROPHECY
Sooner or later every naming session falls into one of three schools.
There is naming by looks: the patch, the spot, the boots, the one white whisker doing something unusual. Honest, descriptive, and safe — a cat named for her markings wears the name forever, because the evidence never changes.
There is naming by crime, which is my personal favorite and the most accurate science of the three. A kitten who has stolen a chicken leg, unplugged a router, and escaped a closed room in her first week has told you her name. It is Bandit, or Trouble, or some variation on the theme of a police report. Crime names are earned, and a cat respects a name she has earned.
And there is naming by prophecy — the name for the personality that has not happened yet. You call the tiny trembling rescue “Tiger” in the hope she will grow into it, or “Her Majesty” as a joke, and then spend fourteen years discovering the joke was a forecast. Be careful with prophecy names. Cats have a way of reading the paperwork.
THE NICKNAME INFLATION LAW
Now we come to a law of nature as reliable as gravity: every cat’s name grows handles.
It starts innocently. A shortening here, a rhyme there. Then come the titles, the diminutives, the food group, the -Beans and -Buns and -Butts, until a creature who arrived as “Max” is answering — or declining to answer — to Maxwell, Maxie, Max-a-Million, Sir, Bubba, and The Management. A cat’s full collection of names sounds like the roster of a CB radio club, and every handle was earned in a separate incident.
Do not fight this. You cannot win. Nicknames are not the name decaying; they are the relationship accumulating. Nobody has six names for something they do not love. Strangers get the official name, once, politely. Family gets the whole radio club.
THE PAPERWORK NAME AND THE KITCHEN NAME
One last wrinkle, for the adopters of grown cats: the rescue who arrives with a name already installed. People agonize over this — is it disrespectful to rename a cat who has been “Princess” for six years? Friends, the cat has never once seen her paperwork. Princess answers to the tone of the person who feeds her, and if the person who feeds her now calls her “Beans” in the dinner voice, she will be Beans by Friday and Princess only at the vet, where she was planning to ignore everybody anyway.
Keep the old name somewhere in the records if it makes you feel polite. Then call her what your kitchen calls her. The kitchen is never wrong.
THREE WEEKS OF “KITTY” IS NOT A FAILURE
So to the lady with the nameless kitten, and to everyone standing in a kitchen right now calling a cat “baby” and feeling behind schedule: relax.
“Kitty” is the oldest name there is, and it has launched a million good cats. What you are really doing in those first weeks is reconnaissance. You are learning whether she is a duchess or a burglar, a shadow or a brass band. The name that fits that cat — the real one, discovered and not assigned — is worth the wait, and when it arrives you will not need a committee of five hundred and ten to confirm it. You will say it once, in the kitchen, by accident, and it will stick like it was always there.
Because it was. You just had to live with her long enough to hear it.
A cat’s name is the first story you tell about her. Take your time getting it right — she intends to be answering to it, selectively, for twenty years. — YNOT!
