Cat Names - III

updated:  22 Oct 07

    Even while Hyoko  豹子 was still a part of my household, I'd decided that my next round of cats would involve at least two female kittens.  On 21 March 1998, Garrison Keillor's "News from Lake Wobegon" on NPR's Prairie Home Companion suggested the name "Alice B. Toeclaws".  Apparently I wasn't the only one taken by the name; a Google search in June 2005 turned up a couple of cats-for-adoption with the same name.  At the moment (July 2005) , though, given her current size, it's not inappropriate to think of her more as an homage to Edward Albee's play, Tiny Alice.  By October 2005, this connection is no longer relevant; she's filled out nicely....  However, by mid-2007, Alice had begun to morph into another formal name:  Alice N. Ordnung (an ironic Teutonic commentary on the way Alice treats objects left on surfaces above floor-level...)

    When the current kittens finally became available in June 2005, however, colleague Paul Young had only one female left.  Obviously, my second name choice (already settled by November 2001) of "Florence Victoria" would have been inappropriate for the male....

    So, I thought back to the first cat I'd ever "owned" -- the summer of 1965, doing summer theatre in Falmouth MA, we lived on an estate where the caretakers had a lot of cats, and I ended up informally adopting the smallest, blackest kitten.  A black cat immediately suggested Edgar Allan Poe, so I decide to call it "Edgar".  This name proved to be gender-inappropriate, however, so for the rest of the summer the cat was called "Edgaretta".  (When I returned to Highfield Theatre in 1967, I learned that Edgaretta had not survived the following summer, having had an unfortunate encounter with a heavy garage door... Two years later, in a completely unrelated development the Oberlin College Gilbert & Sullivan Players were succeeded at Highfield by the College Light Opera Company).

    Still thinking of "Edgar", from there I moved to a name a little less ordinary, and the phonemes of "Edgar" somehow morphed into "Hrothgar" -- a name which bridges both ancient English literature and the computer age.  Then, on 18 June 2005, another skit on Prairie Home Companion used the name "Hrothgar" as a symbol of generic barbarism -- not really appropriate, since the "real" Hrothgar was gentle and reflective.

    Then, on 15 October 2005, a new kitten, half-sib of Hrothgar and Alice, joined the household.  She occupied a slot already named "Florence Victoria" (partly in tribute to my great-aunt, Florence Elizabeth Hazell,1889-1961), and now I'm watching to see if that actually is her name.  At the moment, she gets referred to as "FV" or "Vicky Flo", but Dan Fisher's suggestion of "Flovic" is gaining ground, in part because it permits me to impute to her an otherwise non-existent East European heritage:  Flovič, Flović, or even Фловица.  If she were Chinese, however, it would be 茂勝 (Màoshèng).  Stay tuned...

    By mid-2006, cat #3 is now unmistakeably "Flovic"