Pet names

Further to yesterday's post: today? Watermelon! Yay melon.

Anyway. Before I start the blather I should say that in a vain attempt to make the usual pointless photo slightly less pointless, I'm posting an old shot from the DSi because I didn't have any more recent pictures of the pets on hand. DSi photography. Now there's quality in action, folks.

And now, pet names. It hasn't exactly recently come to my attention that I'm a little bit different with pet names. I've had a hand in naming a fair number of pets over the years, and while I can't say that the names I choose are terribly original or unusual, that fact that I tend not to use those names after the pet's already been given them probably is.

I have pet names for my pets' names, you see.

Take the cat ball above. That's Penny. I came up with the name Penny even though she was technically my parents' cat, because as we were trying to figure out a name for the new kitten it occurred to me that her eyes were very copper-coloured. Thus, Penny. Her eyes greened up a bit as she got older (so I guess now she's a slightly corroded Penny), but still. Penny's a perfectly fine name for a cat.

So I, of course, call her Lumpy now.

And why Lumpy? Well, it started when she was little and used to get weird swollen lumps on the inside of her lower lip. The vet said she might get them all her life -- she ended up growing out of them, though -- and the odd look it gave her face started me in the habit of calling her Lumpy. But why still Lumpy if she's not anymore? Oh, there are plenty of lumpy things about her to help the name stick. Anyone who's had a long-haired cat knows that you occasionally have to deal with litter box lumps, for example. Also, as the picture helpfully shows, she's pretty good at being a lump generally.

Yep. She's lump.

And, erm, sorry for the earworm if you followed that link.

Lumpy, naturally, isn't the only animal I've rechristened. Once you get in the habit you don't just get out of it. Max, who's often featured here for being the world's neediest cat, is often Smack. Sometimes he's much worse things, and sometimes he probably thinks that Max is his middle name because his first name must be Jesus...

Um. Yeah.

Dogs, by the way, are generally Dogbreath. It works for pretty much every dog, I figure.

Here at work the animals fare a little better from me, but only because I'm sharing the names with the public. Our recently departed garter snakes were Lost and Found, courtesy of Wheat's wife (I always kind of liked that), and since I get a kick out of the fact that few people younger than me would recognise our salamanders Boris and Natasha as a reference to Rocky and Bullwinkle (and yes, I was the one who named Boris and Natasha), I don't have nicknames for them. I did, however, laugh when one of our younger staffers tried to explain the names as "I dunno. It's from some cartoon or something."

We do have one other, younger salamander here, though. Since it didn't seem fair to have a Rocky without a Bullwinkle (or vice versa) I decided to abandon the theme and let our preschool kids name the new guy. Or girl.

They called it Spirit.

Um. Have I mentioned that I don't do well with cute or sweet pet names? That one's borderline for me. I'll use it around the general public, but for the rest of the time the salamander is Fluffy, as far as I'm concerned.


Oh, come on. How could you not name a salamander Fluffy?







Ok, maybe it's just me, then. But at least I didn't name him Lump, right?