Have you ever had a specific expectation, one that was quite logical, yet the outcome was the absolute opposite of what you anticipated? It defies common sense and good judgement. People’s names are a great example of something you anticipate will reflect their nature or temperament, but may actually reflect the opposite characteristics. Parents often choose a name for their newborn based on their potential personality, physical attributes or temperament. Sometimes it is chosen because it is popular and might help their child fit in with their peers, or is a biblical or cultural preference. Other parent’s pass their own names down to their sons and daughters, in the hopes of sharing the values they prized with the next generation.
Among the Annalas, the names John and Jacob were passed down through multiple generations and branches of the family tree, leading to some confusion when one is trying to determine which John or Jacob or John Jacob they were referencing. I guess that is what makes exploring your ancestry so interesting.
If the traits the parents were trying to imbue their child with don’t materialize over time, they may adopt a nickname that seems more illustrative of the child. We often add the “ee” sound to names when the child is young. Calling a boy Johnny or Billy instead of Jonathon or William seems more childlike or affectionate. As the child matures, they may cast aside the nickname or original designation in search of one they feel better represents the person they have become. It is difficult to imagine Johnny as the CEO of a giant corporation garnering much respect. But I am sure there are some Johnnys who have overcome that obstacle if that was the name with which they were most comfortable.
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Naming a child is a gift from one generation to the next, carrying on your family traditions or values. It is symbolic of who you are and hope to become. It may change over your lifetime, between relationships and most certainly across generations. It becomes complicated when names go in and out of fashion. Sometimes you run out of names to choose from because you have named your dog or cat, fish or bird, even vehicle or home with all of the “good” ones.
You can get pet names right or wrong in the same way that you can get a person’s name right or wrong. Our current cat, Killer, is a perfect example of an educated guess gone strangely array.
Killer earned his name as a kitten for his prolific propensity to pounce on assorted targets, from dust bunnies to laser lights, buzzing flies to butterflies. We were sure this instinctive ability would make him an expert mouser when he matured and help keep our home free from rascally rodents.
Killer’s five-year-old physique screams hunting machine. He is muscular, sleek and agile. His vertical leap rivals LeBron James, one of the NBA’s high flying athletes. He can move effortlessly from deck rail to roof top, and bounds through high grass like a frightened deer. He can remain motionless for minutes, observing his potential prey, waiting for the exact moment when he can execute the kill. With all these textbook traits of an awesome assassin, Killer should be our number one rodent eradicator.
Alas, it was not meant to be. Killer needs to have his name changed to better represent the cat he has become. He is a fake, a phony, a cartoon counterfeit of a cat. He sleeps all day on the top of the china cabinet. In the early evening he stretches his furry frame, flicks his lengthy ringed tail side to side like a maestro warming up for a symphonic performance, and saunters to the front door alerting his doorman to expedite his exit. The great feline hunter is on his evening mission to eradicate mice and gophers from his domicile and neighboring fields. Or so we were once led to believe.
At 4 a.m., just like clockwork, he returns, scratching on the screen outside the bedroom door until one of us is roused and lets him back inside. We imagined he had done his job dining on delectable delicacies throughout the evening hours. His killer instinct satiated until night falls once again.
Oh, so not so. Killer’s return to the house at dawn appears to be merely for a congratulatory head pat, a trip to the litter box and then off to the food dish to fill his empty tummy. We were deceived by this catty con artist for longer than I care to admit. But as time passed, we found no tell-tale remnants of a real hunter’s quest. No feathers, fur or tails deposited at the door. No greasy grimy gopher guts or smell of fresh kill on his breath. Killer had mastered the age old game of cat and mouse, but had never learned how to finish the job.
Evidence of his playful rather than hunter temperament was discovered in the early morning hours upon his return to the comforts of home. A rustling in the corner behind the dresser alerted us to his playmate, a mouse quivering in the corner behind a shoe. My husband had to become the unwilling exterminator, removing the mouse and finishing the job which Killer was enlisted to do. In fact, that cat actually snubbed us for days, I am sure for doing in his playmate.
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Over time, Killer became the Jedi master of catch and release, infiltrating our home with an assortment of rodents, rather than keeping it free of those disease ridden interlopers. One summer day, he inadvertently lived up to his name, when he brought a gopher in to play. Said gopher hid from his playmate under the bathroom sink, then made a hasty exit down the furnace vent, electrocuting itself on the HVAC system below. When we turned on the furnace one crisp fall evening, our home was engulfed in the sickening stench of an incinerating varmint.
Obviously, Killer is not the best name for our playful cat. If you have any creative ideas for a more appropriate name, please let me know. So far I am leaning towards Passi Fist or Play Boy. It is hard to begin to call a person, or a pet for that matter, by a different moniker when you have associated that particular name with them for a few years. We will probably just continue to call him Killer. But we could let his name drip off our tongues in a cynically sarcastic style that would reflect our disdain for his exterminating abilities.
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