The Naming of Cats

The momma speaks....

Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer's names came from T.S.Eliot by way of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I'm a big fan of ALW (although not as huge as the Sextet's momma is!), and I'd taken the kids to see the national tour of CATS shortly before these two came home to live with us.

They were originally being called Fiazko (Mungo) and Moomoo (Teazer). I have an online friend who goes by Fiazko, and I just couldn't see using that for the kitten. The name came about because they were born during Hurricane Katrina (no, we're nowhere close, but I guess Abby has family somewhere down there, so it was hot on their minds). And I'm sorry, Teazer may look like a floofy Gateway box with legs, but I was NOT going to continue calling him a cow. I'd been sifting around looking for boy-girl pair names but nothing really grew on me enough to use.... until we saw the show. In the stage production, Mungo is male and Teazer is female. At the time, we thought the kittens were as well. Wasn't till they went in for alterations that we found out we had them backwards, and by then they'd already been given their new names, so we just left it as is. I was asked by several family members if I was going to flip the names to match the stage production. Then I read the original plays and realized that there's no gender indicated, so I'm not worried.

As for Firecat (who I often call Fire now as a nickname, or fluffmonster, even though he's looking like he's going to stay short haired, or just kitteh when I'm being goofy and in lolcat mode).... there's a Cat Stevens album called Teaser and the Firecat. Has some of my favorite CS songs on it. We were originally going to take another pair from the litter, but the human dad adopted out all but two without letting anyone else know what he was doing. Pooka's friend Abby came home one day to discover that only Mimi and Firecat (who they were calling Bud) were left. We were going to take Bud and Miller (yes, they were being named for beer.... my daughter has strange friends), and I was again thinking of alternate names. When I found out that Miller was gone already, I told Pooka to bring our boy home right away before he could be adopted out from under us. While I was on the phone with her about it, Moonshadow came on the radio. Which put Teaser and the Firecat in my head. And I just couldn't shake it!

Teazer and Fire are getting along a lot better overall, as you can probably tell by the picture in the last post. They only stayed curled up like that for a few seconds, basically long enough for me to get the shot. Then Teazer rolled over but stayed nearby. They rassle and chase each other all the time. Mungo, however, is still not willing to accept the little interloper yet. Lots of growling and hissing, lots of bonking him on the head if he gets too close. She's gotten sufficiently used to him to finally come back into my bedroom, though, and I've caught her eating the Kitten Chow a couple times. Probably retaliation for Fire going after the stinky goodness LOL.

Now the babysitter's cat has a litter of kittens and they're all trying to convince me to adopt the little russet kitten with the weak back legs. He's doing much better, by the way. Still weaker than his littermates, and his rear paws are turned out at the ankles, but he's able to get around almost as well as anyone else in the litter. They're all really wobbly and kind of dragging their back feet behind them. They're about 3 weeks old now, I think, so it's going to be a while before I have to worry about being nagged into submission. Mungo's lack of acceptance of Firecat is a big reason for me to not bring another kitten home, and especially if he's still got mobility issues. He may not be able to get away from pissycranky alpha female.


I'm not going to tag anyone because I don't know who's already played. So consider yourself tagged if you want to!!! :)

Momma