Favorite Pet names. Your critters, or others...

[Jeebo]

102. Riley, Rose, Tyson

I had a gray tabby and walked by him one day while he was napping on a corner of a bookcase. I thought, "This cat has people feeding him, giving him water, changing his kitty litter, opening doors for him, giving him affection, nobody is mistreating him, the little guy has a free meal ticket for life. He really is living the life of Riley." I was thinking about that radio show from the 1940s, "The Life of Riley", starring William Bendix as the title character Chester A. Riley. Riley really was the perfect name for that cat. It fit him to a T. He was Riley for as long as I had him. He wandered around the neighborhood a lot and some of my neighbors who didn't know his name had their own names for him too. Anubis was the name a mother-and-daughter three houses up the street gave him, for example. But most of my neighbors who found out that his name was Riley called him by that name, too.

With people Riley was really friendly and affectionate, but not so much with other critters. But there was one exception: There was a big, rotund, yellow tabby two houses south of my house named Pumpkin. That was a great name for him, because he did look like a pumpkin. He was the color of a pumpkin, big and round like a pumpkin. He was not my cat and so I didn't get to name him. He was my neighbor and my friend, though, a really good guy, and Riley liked him too. In fact, Riley and Pumpkin were best buddies. They wandered around the neighborhood a lot, and it was a really beautiful thing when I was in my front yard and here would come Riley and Pumpkin, trotting along to my house. It was in fact a beautiful thing, seeing the obvious friendship between those two guys.

Well, Pumpkin was a big, strong guy, but he had a high, squeaky meow that you would not expect from a big guy like him, so I started calling him Tyson. As I said, he was not my cat and so I didn't get to name him, but Tyson was my nickname for him.

I had a female cat, a stray, who took up with me. A kind of splotchy, black-and-tan-and-white with faint tabby markings. Until she settled down in my house after a few months, she had a bit of a wild streak. I named her Rose, because she was really pretty, but she had thorns. Rose was the perfect name for that cat, too. Coincidentally, the name of the veterinarian I took her to was Dr. Rose. An interesting coincidence.

Rose had a litter after one of her wanderings and I had her spayed. I have one of the cats from that litter now. His name is Fred. I don't know why I named him Fred; he just seemed like a Fred to me, for some reason which I cannot articulate.

— Ron