Pickle is a ball of energy and I’ve considered whether a second cat would wear him out. I was at Cat Protection Society talking to them about the idea and one of the girls said they had a very social cat at the moment named Cous Cous. Now social or not, I simply couldn’t adopt a cat called cous cous. That would mean we would have Licorice, Saffron, Pickle and Cous Cous. People would start to think I was food obsessed… that I’d developed some bizarre condition of only adopting cats if they could be a condiment! Add Chilli to the mix and it’s already a little ‘food heavy’. Of course, chilli’s real name is kecil (pronounced like the ke in ketchup and the c as a ch). It is the Indonesian word for small (given Chil was dumped at 2 weeks and hand reared she has always been very petite).
As far as cat names go, I think Cous Cous is rather cool. In my family, no cat can ever be given a human name. It appears this must be a family oddity because many people give their cats human names. Cat Protection Society at the moment have Max, Gibson, Franklin, Quinn, Frida, Claire… human names abound! Of the non-human names (cous cous aside), I think a pair called ‘fortune and cookie’ is pretty cute. When I first got my girls I thought of all sorts of ‘pairings’. I remember contemplating ‘krispy and kreme‘ for quite a while. As neither of them has the personality of a krispy it was perhaps a lucky escape. Today Andrew told me ‘we should have called Pickle Bart Simpson… he’s as irritating as Bart sometimes. But oh no, we couldn’t give him a human name!’

While my family avoids human first names, surnames are quite acceptable. The cats of my parents and my childhood include: (don’t think we have very shortlived cats… we generally have had 3 at once)

• Russell – oh yes, that was a human name. But we didn’t name him. Mum and dad bought the house and the cat came as part of the package.
• Streisand – she had a weird nose
• Piewackit – of bednobs and broomsticks fame; all black and a beautiful temperament
• Miss Piggy – well she owned the place. She was well named!
• Jingle – a little black kitten we adopted a couple of days before Christmas
• Fizgig – I think it’s a Dark Crystal character?
• Holmes – originally named Homeless… the pathetic attempt of my brother and I (aged about 10) of trying to get dad to allow us to keep ‘homeless’. After dad finally succumbed we changed it to Homes… and well Holmes had more finesse!
• Poirot – named for being exceptionally inquisitive I don’t think we had considered we already had a detective in the household
• Chilli (formerly kecil). I never use her full name at a vet after someone wanted to treat a cat which rhymed with heckle. Clearly not an Indonesian speaking vet).
• Pippin – what can I say… mum was obsessed with Lord of the Rings
• and lastly the food gang… Licorice, Saffron and Pickle.