Minxie
This is actually her name, and I'm sticking with it. It's a fine name. If she'd been called Snookums I might have had to change it but Minxie captures her pretty well. She's quite nice but not reliable. She went to the shelter because she took against her owner's new husband and baby. I totally would not trust her with a baby.
Bella
I once decided that if I got a dog I would call her Bella, so I could shout 'Chow Bella' at dinner time. Minxie is not a dog though. If she were a dog I think I'd know how to communicate with her. Also Bella just isn't a very good name.
Victoria Regina
She's really not amused. She is not prepared to play. I've mostly given up trying to get her to. Also even if she does make a leap for a toy, if I twitch it out of the way at the last minute in a playful manner she gets embarrassed and has to pretend she was actually leaping at something else -- or if she puts her paw up to pat it but isn't quick enough she has to pretend she was stretching her foreleg out to lick it instead. I don't understand this. There's only me and her here, and she's missed the boat on dignity where I'm concerned, I clean up her poo.
Apparently Queen Victoria was often amused, but I still bet she wouldn't leap after a mouse on a piece of elastic.
Snarlygoggs
I was reading some seventeenth-century will inventories with notes and came across the word 'snarlygoggs', which apparently is a Devon dialect word for the rough stuff left in the dregs when cider is made, which was often in turn used to make illegal cider brandy. Minxie does snarl at me -- not so much now as before. I came up with a policy which was that if she snarled and hissed I would hiss back and not look away, though I was actually a bit scared of her for a while. I think that at first she was hoping that she could be boss. She's welcome to manipulate me, but I won't be bullied. I don't think I could live with a pet that frightened me.
Kasparov
She's a lazy cat, which is great, but unfortunately she turns out to be quite intelligent, which is not so good. She gets bored. I've got her some cat puzzles, most successfully this treat maze. She has to push the treats down the holes to make them fall out at the bottom. Since I got it our interactions have improved, and she asks for treats to be put in it -- she seems to prefer them like that rather than just given to her. Once I have put the treats in she sits and studies it intently like a chess player planning her first move. She also has a ball which intermittently dispenses treats as it's rolled around. Once it's empty she likes to dribble it to me like a footballer and repeatedly roll it against my feet. I like it when I know what she wants. (Obviously in this case her name would have to be Kaspurrov.)
Merricat
Not that she's merry, but I read Shirley Jackson's American Gothic classic 'We have always lived in the castle', and this is the name for her if what's going on in her head is lots and lots of things. (Also although I've never read any of her books, Edwidge Danticat is a brilliant name.)
Emma Bovary
I think this fits her character quite well. She really really wants, but I don't know what she wants, and I'm not sure she does. She wants to be inside and outside at the same time. She wants me to do something but whatever I try is not that thing. She wants me to open the door so she can go outside, but not that outside, an outside where it's not raining. But I've gone off giving tragic names to pets since when I was fourteen I called our new puppy Tess after Tess of the D'Urbervilles and she died young and horribly. We then got another puppy from Tess's mother's next litter and I called her Eliza-Louisa after 'Liza-Lou, Tess's younger sister whom Angel marries in the book. My family humoured me about all these names, though we actually called her Elly day-to-day, and she lived to a very good dog age. (And anyway the cat's name would clearly have to be something like Emmew Bovary or Emma Bofurry.)
Mini me
She's grumpy, overweight and lazy, doesn't like men or children, gets bored easily and makes herself miserable by over-thinking things. If she could type she'd probably be blogging about me right now. Alternatively, she's a space so blank I can see anything reflected in it...
Snookums
I have occasionally called her Snookums when she curls up on my lap and purrs loudly. I think we'll get on ok in the long term. She keeps making my kitchen smell awful, but if I learnt one thing from the sitcom Friends it's that that's not her fault.
