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Cat-a-List: A Compendium of Interesting and Unusual Cat Names
'Our fascination with cats has led us to give them every possible type of name. Perhaps the easiest to understand are those based on colouring. Ginger and Blackie for example, or Tiger for a tabby, but these account for only a small proportion ....'
- from the Introduction
- from the Introduction
96 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 1991
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December 8, 2022
This is a really interesting book in that the names of one's cats can be anything at all, never mind the ones based on colour such as Ginger and Blackie or even names such as Tiger, Tabby or Lucky, which come naturally, there is lots of careful thought put in to choosing a cat's name. And some of the results have been gathered together by Dick Henrywood with explanations as to how they have been chosen.
Two factors did surprise me somewhat reading this book and they were (a) the number of cats who are named using Esperanto words and (b) the number of cats named after JRR Tolkien characters - probably because for (a) I know no Esperanto words and (b) I do not like Tolkien's work (sorry for that!).
Otherwise there are some interesting selections such as Betty Beatrix Bouvier, perhaps a strange partnership of Beatrix Potter and Jackie Kennedy, once Bouvier. Another intriguing three-name cat was Billy Bunny Corkhill, named after the electrician Billy Corkhill played by John McArdle in the TV series 'Brookside' with the middle part of the name coming from his bunny-hopping method of coming down stairs. Fancy the name of a 'Brookside' character surviving like that!
Lettuce Elizabethan Lily Pod Trout is a Wiltshire cat with a long name but she is occasionally known by a shorter version of Lily Pod! And quite a few cats are named according to their colour ... but what about Porporina? She is a lilac Siamese from West Glamorgan who is named by her owner, who once lived in Italy, with a derivation of the Italian word porpora ... and its meaning ... purple thus the name!
When I was young there was a rock star with the name Cuddly-Dudley but it is also the nickname for comedian Dudley Moore and that is who this tabby and white cat from Mansfield is named after. I wonder if Cuddly-Dudley is musical like her role model for my Dad, who was backstage at Blackpool's Opera House swore that Dudley Moore was the best jazz pianist he had ever witnessed!
Fancy a cat 'hanging desperately onto the sheets while attempting to climb onto the bed, all the time swinging to and fro', well Swingbin got his name from doing just that because he was like the lid of a flip-top rubbish bin ... that is an unfortunate connection, isn't it?
I bought this book for my daughter as a present for Christmas and I have inserted notes of her three cats just for the fun. She has Larwood, named after the great England fast bowler Harold of that ilk, Margie, after Margery Allingham the detective writer, and Stan, named after Stanley Matthews who my daughter once met and admired.
There are plenty of other fun names which makes this book an entertaining read. The only surprise I got was when I encountered Mungo and discovered that any number of cats are named thus - one after the negro servant in the comic opera 'The Padlock' by Isaac Bickerstaffe, one not surprisingly named after Mungojerie in TS Eliot's 'Old Possum's Book of Cats', and another after St Mungo, a missionary in Strathclyde, Cumberland and Wales who is buried in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral. My surprise? Well, none were named after a rock star I admired many years ago, Ray Dorset who went under the name Mungo Jerry. The group's biggest hit was "In the Summertime", a track I used to dance to regularly with, in my arms, my then very, very young daughter who was just learning to talk and all she could say was 'More Mungo Jerry'! We still listen to the track nowadays and it brings back happy memories ... but sadly no named cats for him!
Two factors did surprise me somewhat reading this book and they were (a) the number of cats who are named using Esperanto words and (b) the number of cats named after JRR Tolkien characters - probably because for (a) I know no Esperanto words and (b) I do not like Tolkien's work (sorry for that!).
Otherwise there are some interesting selections such as Betty Beatrix Bouvier, perhaps a strange partnership of Beatrix Potter and Jackie Kennedy, once Bouvier. Another intriguing three-name cat was Billy Bunny Corkhill, named after the electrician Billy Corkhill played by John McArdle in the TV series 'Brookside' with the middle part of the name coming from his bunny-hopping method of coming down stairs. Fancy the name of a 'Brookside' character surviving like that!
Lettuce Elizabethan Lily Pod Trout is a Wiltshire cat with a long name but she is occasionally known by a shorter version of Lily Pod! And quite a few cats are named according to their colour ... but what about Porporina? She is a lilac Siamese from West Glamorgan who is named by her owner, who once lived in Italy, with a derivation of the Italian word porpora ... and its meaning ... purple thus the name!
When I was young there was a rock star with the name Cuddly-Dudley but it is also the nickname for comedian Dudley Moore and that is who this tabby and white cat from Mansfield is named after. I wonder if Cuddly-Dudley is musical like her role model for my Dad, who was backstage at Blackpool's Opera House swore that Dudley Moore was the best jazz pianist he had ever witnessed!
Fancy a cat 'hanging desperately onto the sheets while attempting to climb onto the bed, all the time swinging to and fro', well Swingbin got his name from doing just that because he was like the lid of a flip-top rubbish bin ... that is an unfortunate connection, isn't it?
I bought this book for my daughter as a present for Christmas and I have inserted notes of her three cats just for the fun. She has Larwood, named after the great England fast bowler Harold of that ilk, Margie, after Margery Allingham the detective writer, and Stan, named after Stanley Matthews who my daughter once met and admired.
There are plenty of other fun names which makes this book an entertaining read. The only surprise I got was when I encountered Mungo and discovered that any number of cats are named thus - one after the negro servant in the comic opera 'The Padlock' by Isaac Bickerstaffe, one not surprisingly named after Mungojerie in TS Eliot's 'Old Possum's Book of Cats', and another after St Mungo, a missionary in Strathclyde, Cumberland and Wales who is buried in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral. My surprise? Well, none were named after a rock star I admired many years ago, Ray Dorset who went under the name Mungo Jerry. The group's biggest hit was "In the Summertime", a track I used to dance to regularly with, in my arms, my then very, very young daughter who was just learning to talk and all she could say was 'More Mungo Jerry'! We still listen to the track nowadays and it brings back happy memories ... but sadly no named cats for him!
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