cat names

Oh the pressure of finding a good name.

I still can't quite remember how our last cat ended up being called Misty. Mum wanted to call her Sylvia, and my dad said "you can't call a cat Sylvia!" I'm not sure Misty was much better, but it kind of suited her.

I haven't met our Cat-To-Be yet, but mum had the name book out at the breakfast table this morning. "Calvin? What about Calvin?" Hmm. That could work. Like John Calvin, and Calvin and Hobbes (even though Calvin was the boy, not the tiger). For some reason I think Claude is a hilarious name for a cat, but when I said it aloud I realised it was an unintentional bad pun, so that's gone.

There is a nutty tradition in my maternal granfather's generation - he had 10 siblings and they all had names starting with 'Cl'. They weren't all ordinary names, but some were kind of warped versions of ordinary names. Here's the list:

Cleve
Clara
Clive
Clyde
Claude
Clarence
Cloudy Peter
Clorance
Clewis
Clarvene
Clifford (my grandfather)

My favourite is definitely 'Cloudy Peter'. Every time I see that name I laugh.

The even nuttier part of it is that none of them were known by their 'Cl' names. My grandfather was Colin (not much of an improvement on Cliff I might add), Clorance was known as Bunny (Bunny!) and Cloudy Peter was known as...

George.

So when I suggested we call the Cat-To-Be Cloudy Peter, mum burst out laughing and said we'd have to call him George. I don't think that would be funny to anyone but us, so I think we'll have to keep looking.