Getting the right name for a pet is tricky.
My 27-year-old son still regrets what my husband and I named the stray dog we found years ago.
We named the little black-and-white terrier mix Rudy based on the movie about the small former Notre Dame football player. For some unknown reason, our son thinks we should have named the dog Cowboy.
When this son was 6, he named his first dog Panda. She was a pretty dog, a long-haired black-and-tan stray. Not black and white. At first, he called her Panda Snowflake Keith, but he later dropped the Snowflake.
My husband’s family definitely had some strange pet names when he was growing up. Not for their dogs — Lad and Piper — but for their cats.
They had a cat named Splutt, “which had odd color markings,” for one. (Shouldn’t that have been Splat?)
Target had a marking on his side that was self-explanatory.
Then there was Richard, which was an odd name for one reason: “Richard was the most prolific kitten producer I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. He was a little boy at the time, so he doesn’t know why the girl cat’s name was Richard.
They also had talkative cats named Yowler and Boca, which is Spanish for mouth — and one who liked to explore named Christopher Magellan.
The first cat my husband and I owned was a tabby named Shoe. We found him as a stray, pacing back and forth in front of a shoe store where we were window shopping one night. (We’ve always been an exciting couple.)
After Shoe, we had Bacon — Best. Cat. Ever. We found the short-haired, bob-tailed black cat on a nature-trail walk in the boonies, and our younger son begged us to take the cat home. A friend of my son’s sniffed the cat and declared that he smelled like bacon.
Bacon would jump on my husband’s shoulder from the floor and ride around like a parrot on a pirate. He was the friendliest cat I’ve ever seen.
After him, we got Ashton, aka Fat Cat or Ash, who was rehomed by a former co-worker. He is the 21-pound orange cat whose original name was Ashley, until they figured out he was not a girl.
A woman I know said her grandma once had a cat named Ugly, because it was.
A friend told me about her menagerie. Some of the pets are shared with her sister next door, apparently.
Her six — count ’em — dogs include Mrs. Chen, a Chihuahua that was rescued from the parking lot of Mr. Chen’s Chinese Restaurant; Munchie, a purebred male Shih Tzu; Dottie, the daughter of Mrs. Chen and Munchie; Brindle, a leftover from the litter of that couple; and Annie and Bree, not weird names.
My friend has “only” three cats: Zoey, Murray — who also has a “smoker’s meow,” according to my friend’s funny brother-in-law; and Skunky.
“My nieces and nephews love to give their pets the names of other animals,” she said. Skunky-the-cat’s brother was named Chicken.
My husband actually had a chicken for a pet, but that’s a whole other column.
I told my husband last week that when Ashton dies, if we get another cat, I want another short-haired black cat. My husband said, “And we can name him Eggs.”
No. Just no.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.