Catty Corner: What’s in a name?

How (and why, and what) we name our felines

By Midge Raymond

I was delighted to hear from Ashland resident Marilyn Hawkins with a suggestion to devote a column to cat names — and not only because naming cats is something I’ve done dozens of times myself. As a human owned by cats, as well as a former shelter volunteer, I’ve had the privilege of naming a great many cats — and finding the right name is an art, especially when you’re considering everything from breed and color to personality and gender.

Hawkins likes to choose names that reflect a cat’s unique characteristics. “I think the best cat names are something specific to the animal,” she says.

It is no surprise, then, that Hawkins has a one-eyed rescue named Pirate. She has another cat called Ripley (Believe It or Not, We Got Another Cat), who was adopted by Hawkins after “she jumped out of a car and ran into a friend’s business in Medford. She’s the smartest cat I’ve ever had.”

More recently, Hawkins rescued a litter of kittens. “We heard on Nextdoor that someone had dumped five kittens on the bike path near Walker Elementary,” she says. After finding the kittens and connecting with Friends of the Animals to have them fostered, she adopted two, naming them Brix and Cole. “These two brothers were pretty bonded.”

The word brix refers to “the measure of sweetness in wine grapes,” Hawkins says. “He is the sweetest cat in the world.” Cole got his name due to his jet-black fur.

“I’m a big fan of non-human names for cats,” Hawkins says. “I like non-gender-specific names, too. We know their sex, but we don’t know what they consider their gender to be.”

For Eliza and Brad Kauder, who estimate they’ve fostered more than 400 cats for Friends of the Animals (FOTAS) over the years, choosing names is part of the fun of fostering. Naming cats for musical groups, for example, works very well — as it did with their foster trio Peter, Paul and Mary, who all ended up going home together — as do other themes.

“One summer we kept getting really young single kittens,” Eliza Kauder says. “We named every single one after a flower. Bud, for one of the boys. Iris, Flora, Daisy — all flower names. And we once had a litter of all black cats, with names like Blackjack, Blackberry and so on.”

Themes are popular among foster families, says Kauder, who is also on the FOTAS staff. “It’s really fun. Someone with five males named them after the Beastie Boys. One foster family took in a mama with seven kittens, and the little girl, who was fostering with her mom, named the mama cat Piñata, so all the cats had candy names, like Twix.”

Movie character names are popular for pairs — like Bill and Ted from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” or Thelma and Louise — as are names from characters in books (“Harry Potter is quite a popular theme,” says Kauder) or games like Dungeons & Dragons.

Sometimes foster kittens are named for where they came from. “Once we got two kittens rescued from a house that was going to be demolished,” Kauder says. “One kitten was found in a wall, and he became Wally. Another was found with tools like penny nails, and she became Penny.”

And four years ago, Hadassah DeJack-Reynolds of Tikkun Olam Farm Sanctuary (TOFS) in Phoenix adopted kittens now known around the sanctuary as “the fire cats.”

After the Almeda Fire, DeJack-Reynolds was working with the National Guard to help animals when, about 10 days after the fire, she got a call from a resident who’d been unable to return to her home, saying there were kittens in the house. “We went over there and searched inside the home, and finally we heard them mewing,” DeJack-Reynolds says. “It took about 45 minutes to find them all.”

The four gray kittens were sick, with their eyes glued shut from upper respiratory infections, and they were hungry and dehydrated. “I don’t know how they survived that long, other than thanks to the kind people who were putting out food and water in neighborhoods,” DeJack-Reynolds says.

With help from Dr. LeAnn Ahlbrecht of Animal Medical Hospital in Ashland, who donated supplies, DeJack-Reynolds was able to nurse the kittens back to health. Now grown cats named Smoke, Ash, Cinder and Char, the fire cats live at TOFS among humans as well as chickens, goats, sheep, donkeys and other animals.

Foster families and shelter staff and volunteers can have a lot of fun with cat names, though the humans who adopt them often give them new names — especially if a litter gets split up and the names make a little less sense individually. This may be the case for four kittens currently with Feral Cats Advocacy (FCA) named Cheeto, Frito, Dorito and Funyun (who will be ready for adoption in the coming weeks). Their mother is Mama Ruffles.

But for some bonded pairs, like FCA’s Frank and Beans , who are 2 years old and still waiting for their forever home together, their names just might be as perfect as they are.

Are you a cat foster who’s had fun with names? Or are you a human owned by cats whose names you’d like to share? Email me at CattyCornerAshland@gmail.com — and don’t forget to send photos!

Ashland resident Midge Raymond is co-founder of Ashland Creek Press and author of the novels “Floreana” and “My Last Continent” and co-author of “Devils Island.” Email suggestions and questions for Catty Corner to her at CattyCornerAshland@gmail.com .

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