There is a show on the Home and Garden Network here called "If Walls Could Talk". It is about people moving into old houses, one or two hundred years old, and finding artefacts and papers left by previous owners and the fascinating tales behind them. In one show an elderly man had lived for years alone, except for his cats, in the family home where he had grown up. He had so loved his housemates that he had put a memorial stone in the family cemetary plot with their names on it. One of the cats was named Brother and I was charmingly shocked, because one of the cats I live with now is called Brother. This coincidence made me think of the names of all the animals I have lived with and I decided to share them with you, along with some things I remember about them.
Two early family pets that I don't remember were a dog called Terry and a cat named Rebecca. Both of these animals also traveled with my father on his ship when he was in the Navy. I remember being told how Terry fell off the ship when it was docked in China and several sailors jumping in the water to retrieve him. Rebecca kept my father company on the LST he commanded during the war and he wanted to name me Rebecca, but my mother wouldn't name me after a cat. I have mixed feelings about Rebecca being on that ship. I don't think it right to knowingly put animals in danger, which being on a ship in wartime certainly was. I keep thinking of the animals on the Titanic; Astor's dog Kitty and the pack of fox hounds Billy somebody was bringing back from England are the ones I know about, but there might have been more.
From my father's childhood I know there were many animals, but I only know the names of two; the hound Villa and the cow called Baby. My mother's family did not ever have pets, but she did mention a black horse she and her sister used to ride called Coalie.
The next animal I remember is a dog named Rusty who lived with us in Cuba. He also died there. And I remember the feral mama cat who lived in our yard and who helped my father teach me about animals. I remember her kittens and how my father found homes for them all.
There was a gray cat named Sweet William, called Willy, whose name was also Moseby because gray cats are always named Moseby and another tom who lived with us at the same time named Jughead, because of his enormous head. At the same time these cats were with us Miss Fluff also joined us, but she stayed for years, much longer than Willy and Jughead. She had a kitten who didn't live called JP, jr. because he looked like Jughead and we assumed he was the father. (Jughead's middle name was Percival.) She mourned so when her kitten died that my Daddy had her spayed, which was more unusual in that socially incorrect time.
In Cuba we also had a dog named Lady who returned with us to the states and lived for 15 years. Also in my childhood I remember Duchess and Tiger, two other dogs who lived into my adulthood.
I remember a Siamese named Princess Ting who slept with me at night and nursed on the lace and ribbons of my pajama tops. When she died I wrapped her in a pajama top to be buried. Ting had a litter and two of them stayed with us. Sammy, for Sambo, and Patricia Louise, called Patty Lou. All three of these cats died young as did Big Daddy, a beautiful yellow and white tom who was the father of Ting's kittens.
There is a mystery in my mind about Big Daddy and no way to ever solve it. My father worked security for a train company in Dallas and late one night he found a tiny kitten, whose bloated belly told of malnutrition and who was covered with fleas and creosote and oil from the train yard. Of course my Daddy brought him home and against all expectations he survived. He was yellow and white and I always in my memory thought that he grew up to be Big Daddy, but Ting came to us at least three years after that and I distinctly remember a picture of Ting and a half grown kitten; she was licking his head, and knowing that that kitten was Big Daddy. So the railyard kitten would have been too old to be that kitten in the picture, but I have absolutely no memory of what happened to the railyard kitten, nor of where the real Big Daddy came from. There is just a gap there and everyone I could have asked who might have remembered is dead, so I'll never know.
There were the two birds, Chico and Chiquita. And a list of cats, Sampson and Chuchie and Mai Ling and Ming Foo, and after I grew up and had my own, another Moseby and two Dinos and Rebecca Jane, called Becky Jane. Wally (his name was really Apollo) and Faustus because he was black and white, but he was called Foo Foo, and Rising Star and Cecilia Poops and Molly and Tommy Gordo and Remainder and Tiggy and Sojourner Snake and the Prissy Bitch and Rikki. Of course there were dogs and two were called Chuck and Lucy.
I remember the night Lucy wandered into our yard and started living with us. Jamie and Valerie and I discussed what to name her. Jamie wanted Misty because she was gray and Valerie wanted Lucy and I wanted Dolly because she was small and had bright eyes. We put all three names on pieces of paper and drew one and Lucy she was. There was Simms and then Joe Cocker and of course the eternally charming Spock; followed by Eugen, named for the Prinz Eugen, and Cindy Lou, called Loudie, who live with me now. Cindy Lou was named for Cindy Lou Who because she was innocent and loving and playful and trusting despite the horrible treatment she had received from people before she was rescued.
Of all my old animals only Sojourner Snake is left, but also here now with Eugen and Loudie and him are my Pretty Little Thing and Brother, who started this blog, and Squeeker Marie Dupree. (I wanted her middle name to be Diane when she decided she wanted a middle name, but she insisted on Marie.)
There were also transient cats who stayed around like God's Cat, there were two of them, called so because they belonged only to the cosmos, and the Ghost Cat, (not the real ghost cat, but one called that because of his color.) and of course the Big Head Cat and Yellow Cat. I'm sure I might have forgotten some animals who gifted us with their presence for a little while and some who stayed so briefly they were not named, but these give you some idea and the names of some of the animals I have known and the reasons for some of the names.
Share here the names of your animals and how they got them. We'd all be interested in adding them to our memories. In my memory I see them all and if there were time travel I would go back to one day with each of them just to rub them again and say "I love you".
