Are your cats are named after literary characters?

One of my cats is named Lizzie after Miss Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. She's a handful, too!

My cats are named after ancient Egyptians. My last cat was named Cheops, for the 4th Dynasty Pharaoh who built the Pyramids of Giza, and my current cat is named Hypatia, for the woman mathematician & philosopher who worked at the Library of Alexandria. For Easter I was given two books about her (which I haven't had a chance to read yet), if anyone's interested:

Hypatia of Alexandria, a biography
Remembering Hypatia, historical fiction

Iago is named after . . . well, Iago, the villain from Othello. His now deceased sister was Isabella from Measure for Measure (but we're not saying he murdered her).

Lilith is named for Adam's first wife via the music festival, Lilith Fair.

Marissa was given her name by the shelter where I adopted her, and I liked it.

The late Mr. Mojo's name came from the old blues song that goes, "I've got a black cat bone, got my mojo, too". Since he was a black cat, it seemed obvious.

I also have O'Malley named after Thomas J. O'Malley from the Aristocats (Disney fame).

ArmyAngel1986, those books sounds fascinating. Will check into them.

#1 bookladykm:
That's a good one!

None of my cats are named after literary characters, but I decided a year ago that the next one will be! :)

Kerian, awhile ago I bought a child's naming book of literary names with the idea of naming my future cats. It's great fun to look through!

The other thought was to pick a favorite book (Pride & Prejudice, for example) and name the cats after characters in the book. So far, I have Lizzie. I've always thought a great name for a male Siamese would be "Bingley" as in Mr. Bingley, Jane Bennet's beau.

Oh too funny. I don't know if it's "literary", but I did have a cat named Zaphod Beeblebrox. He only had one head though.
bahahahaha!

rofl Bookmarque, I love that name!

Booklady, try to post a review of them, you might get around to them before I do!

bookladykm:
What was the book called?

Kerian, I can picture it on my bookshelf and the cover art, but naturally can't remember the name (don't have all my books loaded into LT yet). Will check tonight and let you know tomorrow!

ArmyAngel...good luck to us both! As I read in an article on LT, my books are my retirement plan. Sadly, retirement a long way off. Already added Trent's book to my Amazon wish list, however.

Kerian, just did a search on Amazon and finally found it. It's called Penguin Classic Baby Name Book from the World's Great Literature.

2 ISBNs: 0141001526 or 978-0141001524

There are plenty of other similar books out there, so pick your favorite and enjoy.

Not characters, but...

My cat is named Asimov (after Isaac Asimov, of course).

I'm considering getting a second cat, and toying with the name McKinley (after Robin McKinley).

no literary charcters, but we do have one Rufus Xavier Sarsparilla from School House Rock. heh

My son's cat is named Joe. He was torn between Joe and Frank, as he was reading the Hardy boys at the time.

Does the Merck Index count as literary lol? If so, I had Plumbagin, Gibberella, and Pipsyl - our dog was Barbasco. If not, then our most recent addition from the pound is Leo, his pound-given name. I just added Hart , so he is named after the school superintendant mentioned in the Story of Oklahoma, Leo Hart. Our elderly cat still bears her pound-given name of Jumper - know of any literary characters by that name?

I had Tiger Lily from the Woody Allen movie and one of the cats I have today is Babaloo (Desi Arnaz).

My cat's got a middle name after another Issac. She will push something off a horizontal surface and carefully observe its strange attraction to the ground. Then she will repeat the experiment. Again and again. Not to mention her innate sense of the laws of physics is far superior to mine. Her first name has turned out to be apropos as well. She does tend to behave like the heroine of Gone with the Wind.

I have a stuffed Sneetch named Geisel and a stuffed Heffalump named Milne. Does that count?

I had two gouramies (fish) named Pigwidgeon and Hedwig. I didn't get an opportunity to name any of our cats :(

Actually only my youngest cat is named after a book character. Oliver, as in Oliver Twist. :-)

#21 sflax:
What's a Sneetch? Heffalump?

I just got two cats a few weeks ago and named them after chacters from the Wizard of OZ--movie version. Their names are Nikko and Winkie, Nikko is the head of the flying monkeys and Winkies are the gaurds at the Wicked Witch's castle.

Not exactly called after characters, but Sophie has some literary connections to her name.

Her mother was called Suskind after Patrick Suskind. Her sister was Diva after a lesbian magazine (Diva died last year).

Sophie herself was called something which didn't suit her so I renamed her Sophie when she was about 4. I chose Sophie because she looked like a Hanoverian princess on the cover of a book - can't remember what book it was now - and I thought Sophie was a likely name of such a princess (Caroline didn't seem right!). And don't ask me how a cat can look like a human, Sophie does - she looks like one of my uncles at times as well as the princess.

Mine's not; he's actually named after Willie Mays. However, the cat I had when I was a child was named Pushkin. And my boyfriend's cat is named Pickwick.

Spider is named after Spider the horrible cat ... we got him as a kitten after my sister-in-law rescued him from an abandoned building and he lived up to his name for awhile ... but we "fixed" that problem!

I am named after my dog. Domino was the name of my Border Collie. I had to give her away when I moved.

#24 Kerian: Good questions :) A Sneetch is a character from The Sneetches, by Dr. Seuss, whose real last name was Geisel. A Heffalump is from Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne. I have stuffed versions of both, and named them after the books' authors.

#30:
Oh, I should've known about the sneetches. I used to read Dr. Seuss books to my kid sister on a daily basis. They were her favorite books.

My cat is called Pippin, after the (Lord of the Rings) character. There are some personality similarities as well...

Crazy thread--so many literary cats!

I fostered kittens before adopting my cats, so I kept the names alphabetical, though not literary. Let's see, they were Anwar, Billie, Dill, Ely, Ferguson, Killer, Piano & Stoney. Anyway that's what they told me!

The least literary cat I've ever known was named by my ex-partner. It was with Dave that I would crack open a beer with on a Saturday night to watch... hockey!!

Two cats with no association with the written word: Kit and Panda.

One named for a popular commercial--Visa (he's everywhere you want to be)

One with a Star Wars name--Jai which the Jedi were called on a far off planet.

One named for an anime character--Vash the (cat) stampede.

The closest classical literature name is the dog--a black lab named Styx.

My cat, Zelda, is named after Zelda Fitzgerald. I didn't name her, my friend who gave her to me did. And I am *so* glad because I never would have come up with the name and it's *perfect* for my kitty! She has all the energy and personality the name suggests. :-)

One of my cats is named Spock after the Star Trek character. I know he's not exactly a literary character, but there have been a lot of books written that tie into the tv series.

We had a lovely black and white cat called Dexter after Colin Dexter author of the Inspector Morse books.

One of my cats is Clio, after the Greek muse of history (I have a BA in History).

Kitty #2 we call Ellie for her full name Ellie Dee (LED), which is from a comic book.

And the third is Tortia, which has no reference to anything that I know of, except for her tortie colouring.

My boyfriend's mother's cat is Rosie, named after Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie.

I bet he has pointy ears. ;), Spock I mean from Message 46.

#40 varielle:
Um, maybe from message 36? ;)

Harry is (partially) named after Harry Potter

Jasper is named after the author Jasper Fforde

Pippin is named after Pippin Took in The Lord of the Rings

Fiona was named Fiona because that was her name and she told me so (she was NOT named after the princess in Shrek)

My boycat is called Moe, short for Satchmo (Louis Armstrong's nickname). My girlcat is Mia, short for Mia Cattus which is Latin for 'my cat'. Not quite literary names, but not 'Fluffy' either :)

my ex-boyfriend named my (tom)cat. One of his favourite Characters, I think, from Spuren im Schnee by Karl-Heinz Witzko.
Yeah, the name: Shejian.

I am thinking now for a while whether or not I shall get us (Sheji and me ^.^) a second (tom)cat, but what name? Naming is somewhat difficult for me...
Of course it depends on the actual cat... but my thoughts tend to Methos (well... more famous from the Highlander TV Series, but also in some books eg. Highlander The Captive Soul by Josepha Sherman) or maybe Logan (yeah, from the X-Man Wolverine eg. Wolverine: Origin by Bill Jemas ... I liked the characters, I liked the names... so why note?

There are two neighborhood cats who always hang out together and walk with their tails entertwined (boy and girl, both neutered). Our neighbor down the street named them Romeo and Juliet.

There is another (stray) cat that my sister calls Cosette after the character in Les Miserables.

#42 FionaCat:
Wow, I love the names! :)

#26 - I have a cat named Sophie, too, though she's named after Sophie Rhys-Jones, who married someone in the British aristocracy. The wedding was on tv when my dad brought home my new kitten, and the name just seemed to fit. Our other cat, Little Kitty, has numerous nicknames, one of which is Kitty Loo Who, inspired by How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

We also have two dogs - Hazel (name taken from the band Sister Hazel) and Nick, whose previous owners named him Nicodemus after the Bible character.

My future animals will probably have history-related names. Last summer, my roommate and I fostered a very adventurous kitten whom I named Merriwether (our other three kittens were Monkey, Mascara, and Calypso).

#47 My Sophie is sometimes called Sophie-Wophie-Woo-Woo or Mrs Cat or Mrs Monkey. I know who S R-J married, I am ashamed to say. One of the joys of living in the UK is the way useless info like that seeps into my brain and sticks - while much more important stuff falls out despite my best efforts!
I love the kittens's names - Mascara especially - it would have suited Diva, whose eyes were ringed with black - gave her a very dramatic look!

Hope it's O.K. for a drop-in to post here, the cat on my profile page is Storm Cloud, Stormy, which is his disposition, though it fits his coloring too.

My literary kitty is named Ophelia, from Hamlet. She was a starving stray when she found us, my daughter and I both looked at her and said, "Her name is Ophelia." She is anything but ethereal now, at 18lbs. She is on a diet, and rather grumpy, taking pot shots at us whenever she catches us off-guard.

We finally named my current litter, and the littlest one (pic in my profile) is Puck, from A Midsummer Night's Dream

49 and 50 - beauties both of them, though very different, of course! Love the name Puck, especially

MrsLee, the question is whether or not Ophelia likes to go in the water!

Here, Liù is named after the princess in Puccini's opera Turandot, because she was small and petite and carried herself like an oriental princess.

The youngster is Sándor - Hungarian for Alexander - because he's so courageous ...

Big D

Right now we have a black cat named Merlin, but some of my past cats have been:
Graymalkin from Macbeth
Pooky (Garfield's teddy bear, because we didn't think he was fat enough for a Garfield)
Cupid
Thor
I desperately want to use a name from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats but I keep getting nixed. :o(

My cat's name is Zenobia, and people ask me if it's after the character in Ethan Frome. It's not, even though that's where I first heard it. Technically I named her after the Queen of Palmyra.

My current cats are Einstein and Galileo (Leo for short)

Growing up, I had
Cleo the cocker spaniel

Tabitha the Twitchet (Beatrix Potter poem) - black and white cat

Tojo (Japanese war general) my marmalade cat

Billy de boid - my budgie

Wow I just about flipped when I saw this!
We have four cats, and since my mom is an English professor, they're ALL named after her favorite literary figures. So we have:
- a very fat cat named T.S. Eliot
- a psycho kitty named Marianne (from some Jane Austen book...that's her thing, I don't know Jane austen)
- a Siamese named Jane Austen
- another Siamese named Emma (again, Jane Austen allusion)

#58: Marianne is from Sense and Sensibility - definitely worth a read. In a way she was a bit psycho herself, so maybe the name was apt.

I'm currently "between cats" but my recently deceased kitty was named Cherubino, after a character from Le mariage de Figaro. I called him Bini (pronounced beanie) for short.

My brother and his wife have a kitty named Romeo. And my mom used to have one called Pandora, after the (in)famous woman from Greek mythology.

I actually tried a Jane Austen once but fell asleep too much. But then again, it's not the kind of literature that ANY teen guy would probably enjoy.
No, she's the Jane Austen freak who even wrote her MA thesis on Austen's female protagonists...XD

I don't have any cats yet, but when the happy day that I'm no longer living with others who have cat allergies comes, I want to get a cat and name him Tybalt, from Romeo and Juliet.

After all, what cat would disdain being "more than Prince of Cats"?

What a wonderful post!

We had a litter of kittens that adopted us in 2000. Boojum and Vorpal, Snitch and Snark, Agate and Meerka(t). I'd run out of creativity by the time I got to Agate and Meerka. We adopted out Boo and Snitch. Snark died last year of congenital kidney failure - we can't help wondering if Snitch also has kidney problems.

Wimsey (Lord Peter) was a rather playful sort who spent a few months with us and also found a home. His name was changed to Cody. Sigh.

One of the farm cats from years ago was named Ferdinella after the Ferdinand the Bull books - she had markings that resembled a ring through her nose (would be very "in" now!) Percival was one of her kittens.

My ex-husband and I had a white cat with a black blot on his forehead. He was named Rohrschach: Rory for short after Roderick Alleyn.

How fun to share these!

We have a Tamsin named for the book by Peter S. Beagle. And also Lucy named after Lucy Maud Montgomery. We had 2 poor kitties that got sick and died this year named Crookshanks, and Eliot (after T.S.)

our cat is named pippin, but not really after Lord of the Rings - more in honor of a friend whose dog was named pippin, and in partial from John Steinbeck The Short Reign of Pippin IV ...

One of our other cats was named TCake after a character in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.

As a youngling I had two cats named Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, after the characters by Fritz Leiber (Ill Met in Lankhmar, etc.).

Many of my in-(Mass)-laws' cats are named after operas, books, etc. "Frodo" was an award-winning cat they had back in the 70s. They've also had Thais, Papagenu, etc. D'Artagnan, from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas pere. They had Caesar and Brutus (a dog not a cat) from William Shakespeare. Right now they have a cat named Seabiscuit, but after the movie, not the book.

Author names in my friends: I helped a friend name her cat Anais, after Anais Nin. Another friend named her cat Xaviera, after Xaviera Hollander, author of The Happy Hooker. And some friends had a dog named E.D. for Emily Dickinson ...

My cats aren't really named after literary characters. We have Winnie and Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Monet and Picasso after painters. Snow was named after snow (duh!). My dogs are named after Lord of the Rings. Frodo and Llawen. Llawen is Welsh for Merry. Shadow got his name because he always followed our other dog Jessie around. His name is really Jessie's Shadow. We have two little kittens but we don't know if were keeping them. (see the thread Stray cats) But my dad says they have to be Russian names because they were found in the tundra.

I named Julia, my siamese, after the heroine of The Light-Hearted Quest by Ann Bridge - trouble was, she turned out to be not at all the long, languid and elegant young lady she was as a kitten. Well, long, but energetic, loud, bossy, and as for elegant - I have a photo of her reclining lengthways on a narrow (2 inch) window ledge, with 2 legs hanging each side!!

Gremlin was named because he had ears like the gremlins in the film.

Mouse' full name was House Mouse, because he spent the first six months he lived with me hiding under a bureau. He became a charming gentleman, loved by all.

Tilly just informed me that her name is Little Miss Tilly Twinkletoes.

I had a cat named Gremlin. She kind of looked like one of the gremlins from the movie too. But she died a few years ago. My dad named three of our cats. I guess they were mostly his though. There was Bogie and Bacall. And Marlowe. They all died too.

Several literary types-some in the past:

Gandalf (a large blue sweet Maine Coon polydactyl)

Keldar (a Tonkinese-he came with the name and I don't know what book its from)

Rhett Butler (a red Maine Coon cross)

Claudius

Cleopatra

Geoffrey (named after Christopher Smart's cat)

Hi everybody,

I'm new to this group and wanna use this thread to introduce my two cats, though only one of them is strictly named after a literary character. This is Gandalf, because a) he is grey (tigerish grey), b) he has a beautiful beard (moustache) and c) when he wants to be fed or cuddled, he looks as if he weren't from this world.

The other one is a pure black Siam halfbreed who is extremely curious, intrusive and cheeky. So he's called "Köstritzer" which is the name of a black beer from eastern Germany. I chose this name because when he was a kitten they had the advertising slogan "Das Schwarze mit der blonden Seele" which can be translated as "The black one with the blonde soul" and which characterises him perfectly. So his name is a little bit literal as well :)

Hi, DXM. Welcome aboard, and scratches to your fur babies. (I especially love the explanation for Kostritzer's name.)

Young Timothy is named for Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens because of his injured leg.

Yes! My adopted cat was originally "Ash" but I changed his name to "Asher" after an artist character in Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev (has anyone read it?)

jeane, I've read My Name is Asher Lev several times -- it's in my library. I like most of Potok's work, but that one is my favorite, I think.

My cat is named Prospero after the main character in Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Not only because I love this play, but also because when I adopted him I wished a prosperous life for that skinny black kitty.

My recently passed cat Merlin was named after... well the merlin. I also have Morgan, named after.... le fey of course. Having read so many Arthurian books, I can't say which...but of them all The Once and Future King and Mists Of Avalon are my faves...

Yes, my cat is named Rafe, which is typical for scampy boy characters in English Renaissance drama (Doctor Faustus, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, etc.).

Also had a cat years ago named Emma for Emma Bovary and another named Carrie after Sister Carrie.

We named one Serafina Pekkala (from His Dark Materials) and call her Sera most of the time. No other literary names but 2 were named for scientists: Oppenheimer (as in Robert J.), whom we had for ~17 years, and the most recent, Tyco (as in Brahe).

My Puck will be 13 this spring. He was a half dead and half starved feral born kitten dragged out from under an apartment in Ashland OR, home of a pretty good Shakespeare festival. It was getting close to midsummer, the name was pretty much required.

Oh, and if the X-Men count as literature my little grey and white female that has 4 front feet (4 toes on the primary feet and 3 on the inner secondary footpad) is named Storm. My husband's a comic book geek.

One of our cats is called Casca, one of the murderers of julius Caesar, but I don't think that's whom she was named after. My daughter would know, but she's in Mexico.

Sort of. I got my cat when he was 3 years old and he was already named Boo. As he knew his name, I kept it. However, I added Radley to his name after Boo Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird.

Mine were named after navigational stars - only literary characters if you read Bowditch's American Practical Navigator - which is heavy to hold up while sitting in bed. Sirius and Zuben-el-jenubi fit this pattern- but when Orion and Luna were available through a rescue group they seemed close enough to the theme that I didn't see changing anything.

One of my cats is Obi-wan, not EXACTLY literary but a fictional character from Star Wars kind of counts, I think. My other cat is Napoleon, after Napoleon Bonaparte, but his middle name is Roland, not after Roland from "The Song of Roland", but Roland from Steven King's Dark Tower series.

Well, I'm glad someone bumped this back to the top!

I have an Eliot, after T.S., of course. I see at least two others here took the same moniker.

Eliot was named in collaboration with a friend. Her cats: Maya (after Angelou) and Simon (after Neil).

Toby, who passed on a year ago, was named for "Toby Tyler" because both were orphans. My Toby was found wandering out of the woods as a 6-wk old (approx.) kitten.

MaggieMay, however, is named after the Rod Stewart song, in particular the line "...all you did was wreck my bed...". She came from a horse barn, was not housebroken when I got her, and, although she learned about litter boxes fairly quickly, my comforter went to the dry cleaner three times in the first month I had her.

One of my cats is named Daisy after The Great Gatsby. The other is Felix which is just a typical cat name.

Although Felix the Cat was an early comic strip, and thus literary in nature!

Ha! Our three permanent residents are Wilma, Angel, and Simba. Wilma was named (not by me, although I loved the name) after Wilma Rudolph. Angel was named after the character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And Simba was named from The Lion King. So definitely pop culture, mostly, but not necessarily literary.

However, our foster kittens are sometimes named for literary characters. One of our current ones is named Emma after the Jane Austen book (though ours is much less egotistical and meddlesome). Our first foster litter had Oliver and The Dodger. Then there was Amelia for Amelia Peabody from the ((Elizabeth Peters)) books. One litter that we had right around the release of the 7th Harry Potter book were clearly Harry, Ron, and Hermione (and especially adorable). And last year a grey girl and a black boy became Miss Marple and Sam Spade. We called them the Little Sleuths!

DianeS
owned by Wilma, Angel, and Simba

At one point I had a cat named Miss Harriet Vane, but stayed in California and I moved to North Carolina.

Right now we have Magic, Merlin, Coco (Chanel), and Kitty William.

Do pink flamingos count? I have my vegetable garden guard flamingos Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane.

Since Buffy Season 8 is now a 'Graphic Novel', I guess mine sort of count as literary (a little bit?)...
I have Giles, Wesley and Spike. Oz is deceased.

I had a kitty named mehitabel, after the wonderful, adventurous gal in "the tales of archy and mehitabel" by Don Marquis.

My male black cat is named after an author, Edgar Allen Poe.

my 7 month old orange kitten is called Fig, but his name is Fezziwig, obviously from A Christmas Carol by Dickens. it started as a sort of joke. my best friend and i really like the Sam Adams winter special, Old Mr Fezziwig, which has an orange flavor to it. when everyone vetoed Orange Julius Caesar (which i thought was hilarious), Fezziwig just kinda stuck... and Fig it was.

eta: i almost forgot Fig's sister, who lives with my parents. she is polydactyl (has some extra toes) so we HAD to name her Hemingway, since he is my father's favorite author and has tons of polydactyl cats living at his Key West estate. we call her Hemy.

>91 lilyfyrestorm, I love the name Giles and was planning on naming a kitten that, but the adoption fell through.

The kitty I ended up adopting talks to himself in the litter box, so his name is Hamlet.

I usually lurk in this group, but just had to share my literary cat. I don't name cats, they are just Cat or Kitten until A name reveals itself. My 2 year old kitten started as Kitten, then Kitten Monster, then Grendel Monster, then to Grendel Marie. Of course, Grendel is the monster Beowulf slew.

My other cat is Bentley. He came with his name and it fits :)

My previous cat was called Hazel after the rabbit leader in Watership Down and she was a tortoiseshell mix of brown and black and white.

My current cat was 5 and adopted from a shelter so she already had a name and I thought she was a bit old to change it so I didn't get to obsess over what to call her!

I don't technically have cats, so I'll write on behalf of the various family cats from over the years.

I always wanted to give cats human-names, but my parents were against it. I did sneak in the name Nipsu, who is an animal character in the moomins, though. (I don't know what he might be called in English - I am Finnish). OFten the cats were adopted and had names already, as well.

A couple of years ago, after I had already moved out, my parents adopted a ten-year-old male, who had been given a human name, Sulo. I adore this because miina ja manu used to be my favourite book series as a child, and it features a cat called Sulo. I don't know whether the original owners had the children's books in mind when they named him. Fortunately this new cat has changed my parents views regarding human names, although we're still a long way of entering literary character names.

My boyfriend insists our first (male) cat should be named Tobius; I'm not sure where that is from. If we get a female, the name will be Siiri, after a Finnish singer Siiri Nordin. And no, we haven't discussed names for children :P.

haidiw: I hope you give them human names! ;-)

My cat is named after Archie Goodwin of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries.

My first two cats were already adults when they came to live with me; the first was called Circe, a great name (much appreciated by a Greek grad school classmate). The second had the name "Brandy" (hardly literary) at the Humane Society, and she was so sweet and silly that it seemed more appropriate than the literary or historical names I had in mind. The only kitten I've had I named Tomyris, after the Queen of the Massagetae in Book I of Herodotus--she was fearless, determined, and left some bloody marks on people when she was little and still thought that human bodies were for climbing.

A couple of my cats have quasi-literary names.

I'd just read Milton's Paradise Lost when we got Lucifer. And Milo is named for the ancient Greek Olympian wrestler Milo of Croton, who is mentioned in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. (My third cat, Liberty, was so named because she was born on Independence Day.)

My aunt, who raised Persians, had a whole litter of kittens named after lunar craters, since they were born during the moonshot. The only one I remember in particular was Tranquility - very aptly named, since she never stopped purring!

I love the name Tranquility for a cat, that's great!

Our feline is named "Devon" - we adopted him in Oil City, PA and he has 3 splotches of black markings on his head (hence the 3 eyebrows)...I wasn't happy with any of the oil-related names I considered so we named him after an energy/natural resources company in my hubby's stock portfolio - Devon Energy.

My polydactyl cat is named Dinah after Alice's cat from "Through the Looking Glass" and my baby Daisy is named after Daisy from "The Great Gatsby" (because I was reading it when I adopted her)

I once had a Winnie from Winnie the Pooh - he was a stray, a wee moppet of a thing, that I snuck into my bedroom one night when I was a teenager. He spent the night curled up on the book on my bookshelf. What else could I call him? Still miss him.

Alas my Kitty is simply the name we called her when we first got her, Kitty, and it has stuck altho when I am really fed up with her I call her Catarina K. Smith. Whereupon she knows I'm mad and runs

one of my favorite cats was named Dewey Dell after the Faulkner character.

My newest cat is called Junie B. Jones. I had that name picked out before I ever met her, I simply needed to have a cat named that. She's quite spunky, so it fits.

I thought I had already posted here;-(

I have two cats Circe - named after the enchantress in the Odyssey and Muzzy - named after a character in the film Thoroughly Modern Millie.

My cat Han-chan, inspiration for The Cat Who Thought Too Much, and master of more tricks than even Jeoffrey Smart's cat, is pun-named after Sugata Sanshiro the judoist star of a series of novels I never read (I did see the TV series). Sugata can mean "form/shape" and the cat was half white, or Hanshiro, for short Han. The -chan is a diminuitive.

We have a new kitty, Harvey, whom my husband named after Harvey Dent from Batman, as kitty is a tortie with a half cream face, and half black.

Initially I just named my stray/blowin/Ragamuffin - MAX - because my Dad always wanted a Cat named Max. Wonder what that name meant to him?
But after his antics I should rename him MAD MAX

OK. Not exactly literary but...

114> You can always pretend he's named after Max from Where the Wild Things Are.

My rookie cat, adopted last summer, is a 2 1/2 year old who weighs only seven pounds (although a very solid seven pounds). I had planned to give her a name from ancient history (her adoptive big sister is Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetes); but when I saw her the name "Tinita," from a minor character in Steven Havill's Posadas County mysteries, came into my mind. I started calling her that as a temporary name, but when she started answering to it, I decided I was going to have to stick with it.

Harry James Potter :/

Because he's got black "hair" and green eyes, and is rather tempermental.

Though I've gone from full naming him, when he's in trouble, to calling him "Harold" ...because my Dad calls him that, when we visit the folks.

I had a cat named Nefertiti-we called her Titi for short. I just lost a cat named Borsi Mikailovich Barishnikov after the dancer. We called him Mischa. His sister is named Minou after a French tart in one of Colette's novels.

Nefertiti? Have you read Paglia's Sexual Personae?

Mine is not named after a literary character, but, rather, an author. Her name is Mrs. Gaskell, after one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Gaskell.

Our cat's names are Lewis and Clark. Someone told us we need to buy a dog and name it Sacagawea.

If my cat is any indication, that dog isn't going to lead Lewis and Clark anywhere.

Clark is the boss in the house. They did however escape from their cages at the vets when we kenneled them one weekend. They vet said that had never happened and only cats named Lewis and Clark could have accomplished it. We were not surprised at all. They were.

My two cats aren't named after literary characters, but also I have five pet rats, whose names are Edgar, Allan, & Poe and Nathaniel and Hawthorne.

But what are the gerbils called?

None of my cats have ever been named after literary characters ... but my three daughters are.

And....?

Don't leave us guessing. (Our guesses are occasionally unflattering)

*grin* The eldest was named after Bridie Ballentyne from "Ice Palace" by Edna Ferber, the second was named after Amanda Fitton from Margery Allingham's Campion Series and the youngest was named after the author and subject of "The Diary of Rachel Henning" by Rachel Henning. She was an early pioneer to Australia and her diary is a fascinating record of life in the days when, although living in a hessian hut, one still dressed for dinner.

Edited to add the touchstones but the site is having some trouble with 50-year old books.

I haven't heard anybody mention Ice Palace in years. I love that book! Has your Bridie read it? She's named after a terrific character.

My ex was a huge Shakespeare fan, so I have Puck, Ophelia and Iago. Strangely, they are all very much like their characters...especially Ophelia who is quite the drama queen!

My cats are Belle and Samantha. Yesterday I discovered while reading the Winter King that there's a Celtic/Saxon god called "Bel". Good to know.

Well I have Merlin now but he's the first I've ever named....No I take that back...I had a Harry Potter cat for awhile but he ran away

Do Scientists count?
My MAX is really Maxwell (you know 2nd law of thermodynamics, yes that one!)

ETA an s to scientist. :-) Let ALL my other errors stand.

Do 1970s UK TV cartoons count? We have Mungo and Midge, as in the series "Mary, Mungo and Midge" - and no, we're not planning to get a female black cat and complete the trio, as we've covered that by living on Mary Street! Mungo is also quite saintly (as in St Mungo) and Midge is small, irritating and has a tendency to bite, as do the ubiquitous west of Scotland insects of that name ...!

I have a black cat named Macbeth. =)

Six cats, but only one currently named after a literary character- a black cat named Miss Adorabelle Dearheart from Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. We call her Miss Dee for short. She's an adoptee and really hasn't taken to the name. She won't answer to it, but she does answer to the can opener!

The remaining five: tuxedo kitty Mike Meowski (named after a film character from Monsters INc.), tuxedo Oreo named after the cookie, cream colored tabby Cappuchino ( never can spell that!) -we call him Cappa for short, black Manx named Jitterbug for his personality and a brown tabby named Sherpa because she climbs EVERYTHING. She also plays fetch. She's the first cat I've had that thinks she a dog.

My little kitty is known as Moxie.

However, I did used to have a beautiful Russian Blue cat who I named Tesseract (although I called her Tess) after my love for the book, A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle), which I must have read over and over and over and over again when I was a kid.

Moxie has no knowledge of where her name came from, as I intended it not as a wrinkle in time, but as ... oh, I dunno, a good kitty name!

My little Moxie does that, too! I toss things that she has brought to me, and she brings them right back! 'Well fetched, Moxie!' I say. So it goes until she finds something *else* she wants to fetch! She must have *some* dog genes in her!

Well, if scientists count, I have Alexander for Alexander Graham Bell, all dressed up to get his Nobel. (Yup, he's a tuxedo cat.) And I have an Edison, for Thomas Edison, who is the light of our household. He just beams when his humans pick him up.

Add to those two - Lucky, Twitch, and Blaise. (Black and white, tortise cloud torty, cinder like cloud torty)

Named for Blaise Pascal?

I have a computer named Hex. Does that count? I am about to move house and am currently cat-less. I plan to get a couple when I have moved.

Naw pinkozcat, that's like having a CAT named "puss" :-)

... and what is wrong with puss - it is a corruption of Bast, the cat goddess of Egypt.

My last girl-cat was Bast-Ra after the cat in the book Thomasina by Paul Gallico. "I, Bast-Ra, the goddess ... "

Here "Bast, Bast, Bast...you Bastard come here!" :-)

PS. Only ever said to MAX who violates his curfew whenever he can.

I must confess that I usually called her "girl-cat". her brother was Umberto (he was a chocolate Burmese so shadow was an appropriate name) and he mostly got "little boy" - although he weighted 8 kilos.

A burm, 8K's?

My HIH Lizzy is a mere 4.7K.

Oh well, boys will be boys (fat, nowerdays)

Unberto as in "ecco"?

Not fat - all muscle; he used to throw large dead rats around the kitchen and managed to get a couple of them onto the benchtop. He was twice the size of girl-cat (about 5 kilos - she was tubby) but his mother was big. She was also a chocolate.

Umberto as in I wanted Bast and Bertie

If I don't get Bombays this time I'll go for Burmese again

My Cat can throw RATS further than "your" cat can!

Oh wait, wasn't this discussion about

"The Naming of CATS".

Thus, although I KNOW that MAX is "better"
than your "moggie".

Lets call a truce.

Guido.

PS. MAX is still pretty good.

All cats are good!

:) Loving this little conversation up above there....

Weird unrelated cat question - as you already know my cats' names are Belle and Samantha and neither are really named for anyone literary...

...My son is going to college next fall and he is the primary caregiver for our two cats. He adores both of them and will miss them very much. My partner who works with homeless seniors says my son should get a doctor to say he needs one or both of them as "companion animals" so he can have them with him in the dorm because he is so very attached to them. I thought he was making a joke but maybe he wasn't! Have any of you ever known cats to be allowed on college campuses?

^Anna, no, cats are generally not allowed on college campuses, and in my opinion (as a cat lover who has several) there are very good reasons. Just to name a few: many people are allergic to cats and that can be problematic in a dorm; being confined to a single dorm room may be somewhat cruel to the cat; while your son would obviously care well for his cats, many college students might not, leading to inappropriate urination or other problems that the college would then have to deal with; there's a fair bit of drinking that goes on at college campuses by kids who don't know how to handle alcohol, which could possibly lead to potential "pranks" or more serious abuse.

I don't think it would be possible to get a doctor to just say that a person needs cats as companion animals -- it would be unethical of a doctor to do so when the medical reason obviously isn't there.

All that said, I feel for your son and the cats, who are obviously going to miss each other! Perhaps in time your son can get an off-campus apartment where pets are permitted.

And in answer to the original question on the thread.... we have an Agamemnon, so a historical figure, plus two Star Trek kitties: Jean-Luc and Kira.

Oh, I guess our Pixel is literary -- from Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.

One is "musical" -- her name is RaeAnn, and she's from a litter that was named Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So....

151: Oh, no, I would not expect a doctor to do this in absence of a medical reason. I think my partner was suggesting that there might *be* a medical reason because my son has previously dealt with depression and because the cats are so important to him, and I think he was trying to tell me that I was not being sensitive to that because I tend - like most people - not to treat mental issues the same as physical ones.

I agree that many college students are not good at taking care of animals or themselves... remembering my own college days...

And 152: A cat named Pixel? That's so cute. Do post pictures of the whole troop!

^153, Anna, apologies if I sounded, well, bossy! I've just found way too many strays and mistreated animals -- again, not that your son would ever do that! -- so I tend to be sensitive about animal issues.

I do believe I have a picture of all seven cats in one shot..... Just have to find it. (Probably buried under tumbleweed drifts of cat hair......)

#140>

Naw, just because when she was born, she was all black with a touch of white in her paws and a single orange streak on her forehead. As she's grown, the orange has expanded through her fur, so she looks like a growning blaze of fire.

I just found this group (and the entire site) recently. Books and cats -- 2 of my passions in life!!!

I have 10 cats -- all named after authors, all rescues, all came with major medical problems.

Robbie Burns -- Maine Coon/Persian
Bertrand Russell -- Persian mix
Dante -- DLH, 18 y/o
Tom Clancy -- DLH
Tolstoy -- DSH
James Joyce -- DSH
Edmund Spenser -- Persian
Isabel Allende -- Persian
Magaret Atwood -- Persian, one-eyed thanks to herpes
Olivia Ward Bush -- Persian, newest problem furbaby (had ONE mat from head to tail, skin infections, ingrown claws, and ear mites)

One of my cats, a tortoise shell named Liberty because she was born on the Fourth of July, is also known as Weatherby, after what Mr. Crouch mistakenly believes Percy Weasley's name to be in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Flibbertigibbet, mentioned in William Shakespeare's King Lear, Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth, Victor Hugo's Amy Robsart, and of course John Patrick Shanley's Joe versus the Volcano...because, of course, as T. S. Eliot writes in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, a cat must have three different names.

I've had several literary cats: Gandalf and Frodo, Jeoffrey (named after Christopher Smart's cat), Keldar, Claudius, Rhett Butler.

When I got my kitten, she was just 6 weeks old. I had been thinking up all these cool names for her (not having seen her yet), like Piewacket, Imp of Satan, and so on.

My friend took her out of the carrier, and handed her to me. She curled up on my shoulder and I said, "Hello Tiger Lilly!" Apparently, that's just what her name was supposed to be; I certainly didn't choose it for her, and it wasn't anything "cool."

Maybe, if I ever get another cat, I'll be able to "pick" its name. :-)

Well #159, you can "pick"one more name for "Tiger Lilly",
according to T.S. Elliot. The 3rd. name is, am I am sure you know, reserved.

Ah, three names ...

I used to be owned by a beautiful Burmese cat called Edward Wellington Mouseripper. His registered name was Mouseripper. I am not sure what the Feline Control Board thought about that one but no doubt they have seen worse.

Does Peter Pan count as Literary?

Coz my 2 are from a litter that were all named Peter Pan names, so their registerred names are Tiger Lily & Mr Smee (there was also a Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Wendy & Tinkerbell), tho my miss gets called Tilly (or more often Miss Tilly) coz that just seemed to fit her as well as coming from her registerred name, my boy is Taji coz I couldnt think of anything cute that suited him that fitted Mister Smee - tho he does get called Mistah more often than not...

Seanie, is Tinkerbell plump but so tiny she can hold but one emotion at a time?

My daughter is fostering two kittens who were named Capt. Hook and Mr. Snee. They've since been renamed Mick and Jagger.

Not literary names I'm afraid, Gustav was named after Gustav Klimt, one of my favourite artists. After I'd bestowed the moniker I came across a photo of Klimt holding one of his cats who bears more than a passing resemblance to my boofhead, which I consider a sign I'd chosen well. Dulcie's name came from the Spanish word dulce (sweet) because she was such a pretty little round pudding of a kitten. Then she revealed the attitude...

Letterpress, if she has grown to be abeauty and gets a woeful looking suitor, you might rename her Dulcinea . . .

Keigu, the thought of Little Madame being wooed by a quixotic old tom really does bring a smile to my face. He would certainly look woeful after, if not before.

One of my foster kittens I named Mr. Rochester. He was very brooding and Byronic, therefore easily adopted. My other cats are named for food (Pie and Cookie), a favorite gemstone (Ruby), Disney characters (Minnie Mouse--adopted out, and Peach Lambert) and a childhood friend (Amber Louise).

I'm listening to the audiobook of Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan. It's annoying me. I feel a cliffhanger ending coming on.

My kitty is Ishmael, of the Moby Dick variety! Middle name is Moritz from Frank Wedekind's Spring's Awakening. I often just call her Chicken, though.

I acquired two new kittens today and one is named Parsifal from the King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table legends.

The husband of a friend of mine adopted a tough-looking grey fellow, which he wanted to call Egill Skallgrim-cat, but my friend said "dear - think about it a bit... " and a milder name was selected

My cat is named Kitten. Are there any literary figures named Kitten?

Robert

The heroine of one of Georgette Heyer's novels is nicknamed Kitten; don't remember which one, though.

Mine are only named after literary characters if you count Doctor Who novelizations. They are Amy and Rory.

173: Kitty (short for Katherine, I believe) is a character in Pride and Prejudice.

#174

Hero (Kitten) Wantage in Friday's Child.

>176
Gives a whole other meaning to "here kitty kitty" doesn't it?

Which reminds me -- Kitty Bennet escaped from her book to work in the costume department for Hugo. Her attempt to hide her true identity was a bit halfhearted.
;)

My latest acquisition is MacDuff, a lovely little tabby, about 6-7 months old now, named for one of the characters in MacBeth. I had a hard time finding a name that seemed to fit him.

Kitties who have long since crossed the Rainbow Bridge include Beau Geste, Jericho, and Calypso. Today we have Sheego (after the villain in the Kim Possible cartoon) and Atticus (from To Kill a Mockingbird). I call him Atticus Catticus, but my kids call him Fatticus.

My late cat Sylvia wasn't named after a character, but an author: Sylvia Plath. I had a dog named after Margaret Atwood (Maggie) as well.

I hadn't realised, when I nicknamed my girl kitten Poppaea 'Princess Poppy', that there is a series of children's books about a Princess Poppy.

My Princess Poppy was given the title of Princess because she is a kitten with attitude.

Knew a guy in college who adopted a gray and orange kitten together, and named them Cobweb and Mustardseed, which are two of the fairies in a Midsummer Night's Dream. And I'm sure they were as mischievous as the fairies in that story!

Our late kitty was a rescue that we got when he was three months old, he lived to be 15 years old and we named him Smokey because he was grey and white. He was originally named Oscar and his brother (litter mate) was Felix after the sitcom characters (Was it from 'The Odd Couple'?)

Anyway, We now have three sisters (also rescue cats) who are about eight years old. Original names were Coquette, Chicklet and Lollipop. Coquette's name was changed after much deliberation (weeks and weeks) to Ruby because of her reddish-gold coloring; Chicklet became Leila after Muhammed Ali's daughter, also a former boxer - Leila the Cat is a bit of a scrapper, aka bully/instigator (but in a cute way, she's a true wimp at heart). Lollipop kept her name because she looks so much like Leila (both tortisshells) that she could be a twin! She probably is and we don't know it. Leila and Lollipop drink from the same water bowl (Ruby's), eat from the same food dish (also Ruby's), occasionally sleep in the same doggie/cat bed (surprisingly not Ruby's, although Lollipop has taken recently to sleeping at the bottom my bed while Ruby sleeps at my side) and wash each other's faces (never Ruby's) walk in lockstep together (usually after Ruby) and have similar habits and head movements.

We adopted the trio last July 4th, knowing that Ruby had been horribly abused (beaten almost to death by a group of teenage boys!) but that she had been fostered with her litter mates (two males and two females), Leila, Lollipop, Luigi and Buttons. When we adopted 'Ruby and the Twins', we gave Ruby full run of my room - her own food dish, water dish, her own 'facilities' - a proper little kingdom for Princess Ruby to rule. Lollipop spent a week getting used to her fiefdom - lying across the bottom shelf of my daughter's bookcase in her bedroom - Leila spent two weeks hiding out in the living room - making nightly forays into the kitchen to eat from a separate food and water dish; her and Lollipop's shared 'facilities' were nowhere near Princess Ruby's but somewhere along the way the twins discovered Ruby's Kingdom and the delights that it held! Ruby had ventured out into the living room to watch the sunrise, 'Lady Lolli' discovered her around eight o'clock that morning and gave chase back to Ruby's Kingdom; Ruby successfully defended her land (my bed/her bed) and there was a minor skirmish during which Ruby was the clear victor - no blood was drawn, no injuries reported but the gauntlet was thrown and around 7:30 that night, 'Lady Lolli' returned with reinforcements (namely Leila). The twins nosed their way through the door, and Leila took the lead, 'muscled' up to Ruby's water dish as she was being petted and cooed at by my daughter and I; Leila took a drink of water, sidled up and head butted my hand to get her own head rubbed. Lollipop sandwiched Ruby in so that Ruby was on one arm of my daughter's armchair, currently being stroked by her, and Lollipop was on the other looking for attention - from there, Lolli strolled across the little table in front of my daughter and sat herself directly on her closed laptop, as if to say, "Notice me, notice me!"

Last week, both twins were sent off to get their first grooming from a lady who works with rescues, Ruby needs a grooming as well, however, after everything she has gone through before her adoption, I'm somewhat wary of sending her away to get her grooming. Ruby's fur is nowhere near as bad as the twins' was becoming, and she is totally healed from her beating, but I believe that there are lingering psychological affects - she loves to be stroked along her sides and face and talked to, but if you go too far along her back or tail - she'll turn skittish and back away from you. Anyway, Ruby was elated that she was the Queen of the May for the duration of the twins' grooming - they were carried to our friend's car in their cat carriers, crying pitifully, while Ruby gazed imperiously down from the living room window, all but pointing a paw at them, decreeing "I banish thee, evil Twins, to the outer reaches of my Kingdom! May ye never return!" Of course, Ruby was dejected when both her nemesis' returned fully groomed about two hours later! :) She was somewhat amused by their reactions to each other's new coiffures - there was hissing, spitting and occasional growls that lasted approximately a day, until Leila caught her reflection in the mirror as she stalked past to go into the kitchen! Now, both girls have had all fur shaved except for the fur around their faces and their tails have been shaped into a plume at the end! Honestly, they look like temporarily hairless 'Alien Cats' - very strange and weird, but they feel like velvet! Leila stopped abruptly, gazed at herself, and began to do something that she has done before her grooming - she licked the mirror! When we cooed at her that she was a beauty, that we were so glad that she and Lollipop were back, she turned her stalk into a supermodel walk - she strolled to the door, stopped and turned to look over her shoulder at us, then swished her tail and continued into the living room. :)

My daughter is convinced that Ruby has grown bolder with the return of the twins - she seems to prance about as if she's proud of her fur coat that she knows they don't have. The girls have never gotten into an actual injuring cat fight with each other, play fights all the way. Both Leila and Lollipop will chase Ruby; Leila tends to feint with Ruby - she'll acts like she's going run at Ruby and then pulls up just short; inches from her face, Ruby draws back in shock, but by then Leila will have turned and walked away. Lollipop chased Ruby into my daughter's room the other day, Ruby leaped up on the arm of the armchair where my daughter was reading. Ruby moved over to an unplugged printer that's on a table behind my daughter's head to sit in her usual spot there - Mareena continued reading until sounds of scuffle made her turn her head. Lollipop and Ruby were facing off in battle positions, paws raised to each lay claim to 'Ruby's Printer' - Ruby glared Lollipop down until I came in and Lollipop slunk away out of Mareena's room in defeat. Of course, that night both combatants lay curled in their respective sleeping areas on MY BED! Mareena has found Ruby on occasional afternoons in her room, in Ruby's 'Baby Budda' pose - sitting propped up against double stacked pillows on Mareena's bed, golden stomach exposed, head to the pillow or to her chest - totally asleep! She looks so much like a person propped up in bed it's hilarious! :)

George and Martha from Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf. They do fight a lot, though that's mainly (exclusively?) play-fight.

184: Great story!
185: Just keep them away from the sauce, LOL

All my cats have come to me with names already attached. But a friend of mine has named her various cats Keats, Byron, Shelley, Emily, etc. She once confided in me, "Never name your cats after poets. They gain a temperament to match."

My current cats are rescues and came with names attached that seemed appropriate. I like to think that Jasper is a character from one of the Renaissance plays that I often teach, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, as was my late kitty, Rafe. Jasper's sister has a 'literary' name, although she was named for the TV character, not the book: Sookie, from Charlaine Harris's series, 'True Blood.' Since I could not bear to have people think that I chose this name, I've changed it to Suki and tell everyone it's Japanese.

Our current group of four are named after cars. (Austin, Mini, Morris and Cooper.)

The two cats I grew up with were named after literary characters - Othello and Hamlet.

>187 I think this must be true. I had a cat named Shelley (for tortoiseshelly). When she was good she was quite charming, but when she was bad she was awful.

Here are some ideas. If you have white male cat and black male cat, name the white one 'Huck' and the black one 'Jim.' If one male and one female, name the male one 'Hannibal' and the female one 'Clarice', or 'Romeo' and 'Juliet', 'Boris' and 'Natasha', 'Scott' and 'Zelda.'

We recently had a litter of 5 kittens at the rescue group that got named after Game of Thrones families, there was Tully, Stark, Lannister, Baratheon & Greyjoy, then there was a ring in kitty that had no mum so it got put in with the GOT litter & has new been called Snow :)

^192, love the "Games of Throne" theme!

^184, thank you for taking in those girls. Sounds like you have endless entertainment forthcoming!

We've also nicknamed Leila 'GI Jane' because at times she will sneak up on a food dish like she expects it to explode all over her. :) And occasionally, she'll drop into a crouch and creep along on her belly from an elegant stroll - it usually happens when she is heading to the kitchen for the morning repast, she'll stroll by until she gets to the open kitchen door, then suddenly she'll flatten herself against the outside wall and peer cautiously around the kitchen door, creeping across the kitchen floor like it's an open minefield! :)

Ruby was drinking from her own water dish the other day in my bedroom, and my daughter was in my bathroom with her military escort. Leila preceded Mareena out of the bathroom until she got to the threshold - she suddenly dropped into a crouch and crept toward Ruby at her drinking bowl, Ruby paused in the act of raising her paw to walk towards my bed, looked at Leila and carefully placed her paw down behind her water dish. Mareena was still at the bathroom door, watching the entire incident and grinning. She looked up as Lady Lolli materialized from her hiding place beside the chest of drawers at the bottom of my bed - we call it 'Ruby's Bunker' because occasionally Ruby will nap under it - she's an itty bitty thing who is extremely fast! Lollipop dropped into an identical position as Leila's at the corner of my bed and the twins crept towards Ruby in tandem. Ruby backed up as far as she could go, glanced in both directions at the advancing troops - and ran! She picked her destination well, dodging around Lollipop and leaping into the center of my bed. The twins had missed her completely! Leila just barely tapped Ruby's tail as she blew past; then changed her mind and charged into the 'Mess Hall' aka the kitchen! Lollipop tried a more gainful attempt - she clambered about a third of the way up my bedspread, heard the banging of the kitchen cupboards, released her hold on the bedspread and sauntered out into the kitchen, leaving Ruby to bring up the rear after about ten minutes! :)

Sort of. Our older cat (who is over 19 years!) is named Victor/Victoria(vicky, for short). She is a tuxido cat. The two younger ones we call the kittens (about seven years) are Ameilia Peabody (Crocodile on the Sandbank, etc), and Irene Adler (Goodnight, Mr. Holmes, etc).

Oh, 184, the girls have enriched our lives no end! Our first rescue cat, Smokey, was a solitary cat - and quite content to be so! He was just turning feral at the time that we adopted him; out of his litter of five only three cats (Smokey, his brother Felix, and one female) were successfully adopted out. My daughter had had her eye on a female that she had named 'Katy Daly' - after an Irish song - but she proved too feral. Mareena loves black cats (as Felix was) but by the time we were able to adopt, Felix was adopted by a wonderful home and Smokey was still looking. Mareena had only seen Smokey once in a fleeting glance. She had always wanted a cat, but it was never the right time. My late husband and I had had six cats in a tiny apartment, before our daughter was born, and were wary of getting another cat as she grew up. She kept telling anyone who would listen that she heard meowing over at our restaurant, but as no one else ever saw signs of Mareena's 'phantom kittens' anywhere around, we just assumed that they weren't there.

Anyway, about a month after Mareena began claiming that she heard occasional meowing, one of our patrons came in and asked us if we knew that there was a litter of abandoned kittens under the porch stairs! Mareena just grinned and nodded when I told her what was said, but never actually asked to adopt the whole litter, right there! :) We called another friend who worked at a local no-kill shelter and eventually they caught the litter of five.

Smokey passed away at the ripe old age of 15. We of course were grieving but our best friend, who fosters rescue animals (not the lady who had caught the abandoned litter) left a flyer with us featuring a litter of five cats in search of a home. She had said, "I know that it's difficult for you now, and if you don't want another cat right away, I totally understand. Just please take a look and when you're ready, give me a call."

We called her up about three weeks later (after going through each flyer repeatedly, and reading each bio several times over) We knew that we couldn't take all five - although we dearly wanted to - Luigi (an all-black cat), Buttons (a plump marmalade tomcat) Leila/Chicklet and Lollipop (tortishells, that didn't look as similar to each other on paper as they do in real life) and Ruby/Coquette (the sweet little fireball). The cats' biographies were all written in different accents - Luigi's was Italian, Coquette's was French, and the other three were American. We called up our friend and said we'd like to adopt the three girls - what followed was a loud squeal and an excited: "All three! I thought that you might want to take in Lollipop; she reminds me most of Mareena's temperment, but I never dreamed that you may want more!"

We said that we couldn't possibly break up the entire litter by only taking one (they had been raised together since they had been kittens) - but that we just weren't able to take all five together. Our friend cautioned us that the girls were eight years old, not kittens, and would we still adopt them knowing that. We agreed wholeheartedly and the rest as they say, is history! :)

Does anyone mind one more 'Ruby and the Twins' story? You're going to hear one anyway, so the question was rhetorical! :) Two days ago, I was in the kitchen washing dishes. Ruby was stretched out on the welcome mat that's on the tiled landing that splits our staircase in two. The door to go outside was closed; but because the tile is faux stone, it is somewhat cooler for Ruby to lie there during the warmer weather (it wasn't unbearably hot, just warm - a nice spring-approaching-summer day! :)) Anyway, I heard the stairs creak slightly and turned around - Lollipop was just approaching the third step; two above Ruby, lying on the landing with her eyes blissfully closed. Leila was on the step above Lolli also totally focused on Ruby, until I used my sternest voice: "Excuse me ladies, what are you planning?"

Leila jumped slightly, but otherwise didn't move; Ruby looked up toward the sound of my voice and immediately shifted into a sitting position with her eyes on Leila, who was sitting on the third step suddenly mesmerized by our new paint job on the wall (never mind that the wall had been painted a full year before the sisters arrived!) Leila retreated by inches back up the stairs, then turned and bolted down the corridor that led to the bedrooms.

Lollipop was still fixated by our paint job, now facing the wall and studiously ignoring Ruby, who was sitting on the mat staring goggle-eyed at Lollipop. She sidled up to the wall and cautiously licked it, turned back toward me and gave a passing sniff to the heating grate, before bounding back up the stairs and brushing up against my legs as she passed down the hall. After about a minute, I had returned to my cleaning and I heard Ruby clambering up the stairs and rushing to my room! :)

197 that is a great story. Poor Ruby sounds outnumbered but I am glad you have her back as it were.

My kitty's official name is Lucien, after the librarian in The Sandman. I thought she was a male kitty at first -- after all I know next to nothing about cats. But when I found out she's a lady, well, I could have called her Lucy, but... Cats don't need names, anyway, as Neil Gaiman says, they already know who they are. :)

Anyway, I had decided years ago, before I got Kitty (*) that if I had cats their names would be Lucien, Pantalaimon (from His Dark Materials), Ampersand (like the monkey in Y, The Last Man, and also because I love the ampersand character), Pixel (from The Cat Who Walked Through Walls), and... well, I'd like Asterisk to go with Ampersand, so maybe Asterix, like the comics... ;)

(*)I call her Gatina, which in Spanish means, well, Kitty. Or Gatita, or any variation of "my little (cute animal)".

My former roommate's cat was named Sagan, after Carl Sagan of course. But we just called him Gato or Gordo (Fatso, in Spanish).

My wife and I adopted two kittens, and called them after our favourite authors. So mine was Thomas Hardy, my wife's was H.E. Bates. However, Thomas was a girl, so she became Tamsin Yeobright, Tamsin for short. Bates stayed Bates.

A long time ago, I had a cat named Djinn-Djinn after I Dream of Jeannie's dog. Does that count as literary?

Ours aren't really literary, but they are named for artists -- Matisse and Picasso.

I have just remembered that Caddie was named after three different literary characters. One from Bleak House, two from The Sound and the Fury. And it just sounded right for a cat. I never decided how to spell it, so sometimes she was Caddy.

My cats have lived with pet rats named Edgar, Allan, Poe, Nathaniel and Hawthorne.

I love this thread! All the cats adopted since I got married (20 years ago now) have been named from Shakespeare, because it lets me give the cat a name suited to his/her sense of dignity, while allowed me to make as many silly nicknames as I can manage.

So, in order, cats present and past

Othello (Otie)
Ophelia (Diddles, Ofadiddly, Le Blob, etc.)
Petruchio (Pooty)
Benadict (Benny)
Titiania (Titty Kitty)
Beatrice (Beezie, Beelzebub, Bea Louise)
Caliban (Cal)
Horatio (Horry, Horry the horrible)
Miranda (Miri)
Puck Robin (Puck, Puckitypoo)

I would love to one day adopt a pair of kittens, one black and one white, to name Katharina and Bianca, and I want a long haired grey male (possibly a Maine Coon) to name Prospero.

We adopted a walking disaster my kids named Yosho after an anime character.

Another cat we named Orlando because we wanted a Shakespearean name.

Orlando moved out with my daughter and we replaced him with Diana the Huntress. We have a number of French doors and she clings to the wooden frames dividing the panes as she pursues bugs.

IreneF, that is great. I agree cats should have dignified names befitting their station! What was Caliban like?

Caliban? You mean Yosho?

We found him lounging in our driveway wearing a collar that said "Homeless take me in please". We were down to one cat and had been discussing getting another, so we got him checked out by our vet and took him in.

He bullied the other cat and clawed and bit all of us, except for my son. He'd be on a lap, not even being stroked, and just launch an attack. He also sprayed even though he was sans testicles.

His oddest quirk was that he loved having his ears cleaned with a q-tip. I could dig around in there and he would turn into a drooling, purring mass of cat.

Yosho came to a fairly good end, though, compared to the sad decline of most pets. We were taking a nap one day. I woke up and he didn't. His heart probably stopped in his sleep. This sometimes happens, usually to young male cats, and may be due to a congenital flaw.

Everyone was happy except my son.

I think Anna was reading Murphy-Jacobs's post but saw your name, Irene.

Oh heck. Sorry. Gilroy is right and it is not the first time I have mixed up names on these threads.

Well, 2 of my cats (sisters) are named Puss and Boots, because one of them has white feet and I thought it would be cute for the adoption poster. Of course we kept them!

Does that count?