Saturday, February 27, 2010

Pet Names

Pet names are a funny thing. My first dog was a beagle (I think). Her name was Heidi. I was too young to remember if I helped name her or how she got that name. Besides she didn't last for very long. She was hit by a car or something. I have one picture of her and every time I look at it, I want another Beagle. She was so cute...
Later we got the sweetest little springer spaniel mix. We wanted to name her Spot...yes it's true! I think I was only 6 or 7 though and all my siblings were younger. My parents wouldn't let us. So we named her Candy..."because she's so sweet!" We also had a gray and black cat, you know the kind with the stripes. Are those tabbys? Anyway, we named her "Zeba"...like Zebra, but not. Our parents were really nice to let us name our animals I guess.

We also had an orange tabby growing up. We named her "Esther" until we found out she was a HE. But you know what is so sad? We never changed his name....I've always felt bad for Esther. She lived a long full life, but ended up drinking some antifreeze or something. I remember her lying on our front porch unable to move. I just thought she was being a lazy stinker and so I shoved her with my foot trying to get her to move. (See...I still call the poor fellow her!) I feel bad about that to this day. Poor guy was probably in so much pain and there I am kicking the poor thing! We had to put him to sleep.

We also had a Malamute named Nikita...she was one of those purebred types and was really "Princess Nikita the 25th" or something, which is why her name isn't nearly so cool as our others. She had a litter of pups that were ADORABLE.

There was Joe...he didn't last long because he came after Candy. Candy was the best dog ever. She didn't bark or jump, unless someone she didn't know came in the yard. She was the perfect size. And she was quirky. She would sit on our fence and watch the cars drive by...just like a cat! I think they got Joe after I left for college, but he was a stupid dog, according to my dad. I don't know what happened to him.

There was also Dartanian, which I've since learned is totally the wrong way to spell that...he was a CUTE little stinker. He was a yellow lab mix and yes I named him after Chris O'Donnell's character in the The Three Muskateers. I love that movie and he's SO dreamy... I talked my parents into letting me get him. They made me promise I would take care of him. I don't know what happened, but one day he was just gone, with no warning at all. Maybe it was my crazy teenage brain, but I seriously thought I was doing OK. They gave me NO warning..."hey you need to do better with this dog..." Nope, he just disappeared. I was sad and have wanted a yellow lab since then, even though I'm not really a dog person at all.
(Dartanian with Kember)

My parents now own a pair of cats named George and Patsy. My sister's dog is Vince. The birds are Kelley and Gus Gus. We have Koko, which is an Indian name for night.

Princess Madeline the cat was named by Kelley (of course):

I like pet names because they can be so fun. It's not as big a deal as a child's name. Any of you have funny names for your pets?

4 comments:

rachaeljanae said...

I love the old pictures!

kate said...

Love the old pictures. We had a cat named snuggles. Right now our cat is Pumpkin but Mike calls her Dogfood. I thought you would get a kick out of that.

Audrey said...

Our grey tabby (yes that's the term for the striped cats) is named Teancum, after the Book of Mormon warrior.

Incidentally, orange tabbies are almost always male, the way that calicoes are almost always female

Tiffany said...

Well, I loved to name my pets after Disney characters. My first cat was named Minnie. Then I got a bird and named him Mickey. Then after Mickey died, we got 2 birds and named them Chip and Dale. Then they died and I got another all white bird and named her Daisy. Then my cat died, and we got another and named her Cleo, after the fish on Pinocchio. Then she had a kittens, but I was about 15 then and didn't really care about naming them anymore. The kitten we kept looked exactly like Figgaro on Pinnochio but we didn't want a girl cat named Figgaro so we really just didn't name her and she just became a term of endearment "Punkin" so that ended up being her name until she died 13years later. When we had our own kids, we decided to get a pair of parakeets and we named them Lucky and Charm. Then we got our first cat and he was an all black cat and we named him Felix. He got hit by a car so we got our cat we have now and named him Bootsy. We got a puppy and the girls named her Sissy. She lived up to her name sometimes. I found a stray black and white cat outside of Domino's...which thiking about it now she should have been named Domino, but she was all black with a white stripe down her belly, so she was an Oreo. She had kittens and we kept one, but that didn't last long....sad story, he was my favorite, Maverick like Cody Maverick on Surfs up. Now we have another cat and we finally went back to Disney names, Mater. We had a guinea pig in there for a short period of time, but she already had a name when we got her, Babe. Well, you asked about our funny names for pets! Oh, we have 2 beta fish right now whose names are Tank and Turbo.