The Cat With The One Hundred Dollar Name

Mouse. Mouse II. Mouse III. Mr.Bitey. Jr. Jeff. Princess. Elvis. DaisyMayRosesPrincessPiggy.

What the? What are those? In my house, they are the norm. In other homes, not so much. Those are names my kids and I have given our pets. At first glance, they might seem normal enough, but let me explain why they are not.

MOUSE. Mouse was a hamster that we named Mouse. Yes, we named our hamster Mouse. Mouse 2 and 3. When the original Mouse died and we replaced it, the next two were also Mouse with the number. Again, they were hamsters.

MR. BITEY. He was the only pet we have had that his name made sense. He was not my favorite for one reason, hence the name, Mr. Bitey. Ouch!

JR. Jr. looked exactly like Mr. Bitey and he was also a biter. He, also, wasn't my favorite.

JEFF. Ok, Jeff is a Russian Tortoise. Not only is Jeff a Russian Tortoise, but Jeff is a FEMALE Russian Tortoise. My kids liked the name Jeff, so now our female Russian Tortoise is forever branded with the male name of Jeff. People in the neighborhood call her The Jeffers. Much better. Uh-huh.

PRINCESS. This would be a cute name for a female hamster, but ours was not so lucky. Ours was a male hamster named Princess. Poor guy.

ELVIS. I love Elvis and named one of our cats Elvis. One of my kids wanted to name him Balloons, so I took over on this one. We also named our 11 fish Elvis as it made it easy to point to the tank and say, "Oooh, look how pretty Elvis is," you can never go wrong. I know, I am a genius, go ahead and say it, it's ok. I also named them all the Swimming Elvises, or is it Elvi?

Last, but not least, is the cat with the hundred dollar name. That would be Ms. DaisyMayRosesPrincessPiggy. My seven year old couldn't decide on just one name and she said her cat was so special it needed several names, so, DaisyMayRosesPrincessPiggy is the name. I just call it Lazy, or Crazy, or Getoffthecounter, but the cat prefers Heresyourfoodeatup.

Cindy Breninger