You’d be surprised how tough it can be to find fresh names for new arrivals! Here’s how we name cats – and some help we got recently from visiting schoolkids!
When you have thousands of cats coming through the doors of a Sanctuary over the years, finding original names that capture the personality and sometimes the appearance of an animal becomes a challenge.
Thanks to the students at Summit Middle School, in Coquitlam, we now have a ton of cool names that are genuinely, unequivocally, absolutely unique.
But first … an absolutely legit question: How do we choose the names for animals that come into our care?
Answer: There is no answer.
We used to have a policy that animals were named alphabetically. The first litter of kittens in a year would all be given names starting with “A,” the next litter would all be “B” names and so on.
This year, we had so many intakes that we could have lapped the alphabet several times. More than this, some letters are just harder to find names for. We had too many Mangos, for instance.
Since we often need to go into our database to get information about a particular animal, having more than one with the same name can be a problem.
We have “retired” a few names that have become, well, hackneyed. This is especially true with names for black cats. Because of superstitions (!) black cats are often harder to adopt out than cats of other colours. Overused names for black cats – Luna, Oreo and Midnight – are now on our do-not-use list!
Bella, which means beautiful, while appropriate for pretty much every resident at the Sanctuary, simply became too common. So nix on future Bellas! Likewise Cali.
Visitors and staff alike enjoy wordplay names like William Shakespurr, Mewlius Ceasar and Leonardo Dicatrio (RIP).
Also we have retired names, like sports teams retire numbers. Daisy and Precious are examples of retired names that we will not use at the Sanctuary as they belonged to very special cats.
So, how do we come up with new names? Well, if an animal comes to us as a stray, we might use a reference to the place they were found. A cat with a severe eye injury was trapped on Grandy Road in Richmond. So he’s named Grandy (and he’s all healed now, thanks to the RAPS Animal Hospital)!
Lisa, one of our master trappers, likes to name kitties after food. Thus we have cats named Shreddies, Cocoa Puffs, Flake, Chocolate, Vanilla, Nutmeg, Turkey, Stuffing, Cranberries, Shrimp and Scampi.
We also go for themes. Around Halloween, we welcomed Mummy and Jack-O-Lantern.
Then along came the awesome students from the Paws for a Cause Club at Summit Middle School in Coquitlam, who gave us a ton of truly unique names for cats.
Addressing the challenges with fresh names for black cats, they came up with what must genuinely be completely unknown cat names: Carbon Tax, Tripping Hazard and, ummm, Charcoal Cheesecake.
A few military themes arise, such as Commander Cutie, as do hints at nobility, such as Sir Fluffy Butt, Lord Fuzzy Pants, Lady Gingerspice of Clawingham, Count Chonkula and Lady Hunter of the Night.
A propos apparently nothing, they also came up with Failed Experiment and Bottomless Pit. Another newbie is named Chocolate Chip Waffles because, well, why not?
Since we’re always looking for new names, why don’t we throw the gauntlet down to you.
If you’ve got a name you think would be appropriate for a future resident of the RAPS Cat Sanctuary, let us know. We’ve started a thread on our socials. Head over there to have your say.