Greetings, Fabulous Felines and Hoomans of Hivelandia and surrounding communities!

Pondering cats and their names today, and wanted to ask: "How did the cats that live with you get their names?"

Shangri as a large kitten, August 2024

Moreover, does each cat have more than one name?

Of course everyone does things their own way, but around our place the naming of cats is almost a mystical experience!

That is to say, maybe the cat arrives from the shelter with their name already decided, and maybe the humans give them another name, but over time they might tell us a third name. Then, as time passes, the cat may suddenly "speak up" and say "that's not my name... this is my name."

Shangri at about six months of age

When I say it's almost a mystical experience, what I mean is that the cat somehow imparts to the Hooman around it what its name is.

Let us consider a particular very large buff and white cat who lives at our place.

When the Hoomans adopted him from the local animal shelter, he was part of a litter of 9 kittens that were brought in, and they were named the "herb litter" by the ladies at the shelter. The nervous little buff and white kitten was named "Dill" after the herb dill.

Always curious!

Then my Hoomans adopted him (and his sister) and brought him home and named him "Shangri," sfter the mythical Shangri-La.

In time he grew from a relatively skinny little kitten into a fairly large and quite fluffy cat. Through no process did any of us really understand, his name gradually shifted into being ”The Mighty Floof,” or just ”The Floofer” for short. Of course, these are just nicknames, but as often as not he responds more to "Floofer" than to "Shangri."

Almost adult, spring 2025

The name Shangri still sticks with him, and it is what it says in his paperwork at the vet, but whenever the Hoomans are calling us to snack time it is invariably by the name ”Floofer.”

Along the way, Shangri also tried on the name ”Thomas.”

Fully adult, but still hamming it up like a kitten

That came up because one day he was standing in the stairwell, and meowed loudly several at times in a tone that sounded almost exactly like the name Thomas.

Of course not all cats cycle through different names. Some make it known from the very start what their name is and it never changes. Naturally, most cats that come from an animal shelter end up with different names and they were given at the shelter, or while in foster care. It's also very likely that pampered housecats like we have around here are more likly to to have multiple nicknames than barn cats that live outdoors and seldom come in the house.

The Mighty Floof in all his glory! 20lbs (9kg) of sweet natured softness

Most of the time, though, it seems like cats have a natural talent for letting their Hoomans know what their names are!

What about the Feline friends in your life? Do they have multiple names? Have their names changed over time?

Let us know in the comments!

Thanks for coming to visit our cat blog, and we hope to see you again! Have a great week!

=^..^=

Love Cats? Get Involved in Hive's Cat Communities!

If you're a cat lover and often/sometimes post pictures or other content that includes your feline friends, why not become an active part of Hive's growing Cat Communities?

These are some of the more active Cat Communities — why not join them ALL? Many of the allow you to share your cat posts, even if you started at a different community!

HiveCats by @curatorcat is a central "gathering place" for cat content on Hive; promoting the use of the #hivecats tag for feline content!

Cat Snaps by @manorvillemike is a place to post pictures of your cats when you don't have a whole lot to say beyond just sharing your cute photos!

Caturday by @saboin is a community where we get to celebrate posts relating to Saturday — aka "Caturday" — our own special day!

Cat Photos by @andrarchy is a "mixed use" cat content community; posts can be just photos or longer, as long as the subject is CATS!

Cats by @captainklaus (and Sissi!) is another "general" cat content community.

There are a number of other feline communities listed on Hive, but I am not sharing them for now as they have not had any activity (by their Admins OR users) since the Steem/Hive fork. Updates as they become available!

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