And today we have naming of pets

I have a long-running feud with the local vets. They insist on recording the names of all the animals that they treat, and they have been critical of some of the names I have given my cats. I do not care for things like Mr Tibbles, Fluffikins, or Purdy (which belonged to my mother's second husband, a police inspector, who obviously raised his flag for Joanna Lumley); not even for Claude, which I will however grudgingly accept as an excellent cat name. No, I like to call my cats according to their characteristics, either visual or behavioural. And so I've had, amongst many, a Slobber, an Arse-lick, a Pukealot, a Swear, and a Beaver. The veterinary receptionists have reluctantly recorded all these names and reproached me without mercy, although I got away with Beaver for a few weeks until one of the male vets grassed on me.

It takes time to name a cat according to it’s traits, you can't just shake them out of the cat carrier and expect them to perform straight away. So I ran into a problem when I had to take the latest acquisition up to the vets within 3 days of getting it. The receptionist, a Chinese or Japanese exchange student, flatly refused to accept it until she had a name for it, and I was already late for work. I had to make a snap decision. This strange timid little creature would spend ages hiding away, having to be teased out into the open, and then despite demanding attention, if you didn't stroke it in exactly the right way, would suddenly dart away and hide again. I still had only the vaguest idea where it hid, and what it took to get it out again, and whatever I did to it seemed to be the wrong thing. "Right," I said, "it's called Clitoris. Just sort it out". And I left for work.

When I called back to collect it, the student was gone, and the regular lady smiled at me as I came in the door. With a sense of foreboding, I asked how they had managed with the cat. "She's fine now, just needed some antibiotics. And you've changed a lot, giving her a sensible name for once. She really likes it, purrs when you call her and comes over for a cuddle".

This isn't happening, I thought, paying the bill, and then saw the name tag on the cat carrier as they passed it over the counter. My Sino-Japanese student had written "CRITTURS" in her careful and precise handwriting. Was this just another example of cultural communication issues, or part of a cunning global female conspiracy to curb the undomesticated male?

(The title of this post is based upon one of the poems I came across in school as an antidote to Chaucer. The full text of it can be found here. I recommend it and it's fellow poems, it has always been with me in my memory despite my best efforts to become an uncultured lout).