Five years ago, when I still lived with my parents, my mother acquired the most recent feline addition to the family, a white Bengal kitten. Bengals are beautifully marked cats, they have the spotted-tabby striped look of an ocelot and come in orange and white. The white kittens start off truly white and their pattens come in later, in cream and beige. They're half-wild crossbreeds, created by breeding an Egyptian Mau (domestic) to an Asian Leopard Cat (wild). They Bengals that are offered as pets are still half-and-half, but they are always at least three generations away from the original cross, for the safety of the potential owners. They are generally spunky and rambunctious, and have the body-swaying head-down walk of a tiger. They're really delightful pets.

So... here he was, he needed a name. We were determined that for such a beautiful and unusual cat we needed to come up with a truly unusual, expressive, fitting name for him. The other cats had had fairly normal names (at my mother's insistence), and we all knew we wanted something special this time. And we were determined to take our time about it.

However... it was the year Disney's The Lion King came out. So, you guessed it... the first nomination (cast by either my mother or my youngest sister, I can't remember which) was Simba. They *insisted*, however, that they *weren't* naming him after the movie, like all of those *other* copycat people out there- he was being named after the lead tiger and the feline star of the Ringling Brothers Barham and Bailey Circus, who had been named Simba.

There was, in fact, a lead tiger in that circus named Simba, for many years. And he was a wonderfully impressive animal, very worthy of admiration. However... until my father reminded them that there had in fact been a tiger of this name, they were unable to come up with any explanation of why they chose the name "Simba" when challenged to prove that they weren't in fact naming this hapless animal after a Disney movie. Interesting, huh?

My father (despite providing the defense with their prize argument) and I were determined to keep this travesty from taking place in our household. We scoured our brains. The first suggestion we came up with, of course, which had been presented for the previous three kittens, was Pixel (see the thread on books with cat characters if you don't recognize the reference). My mother declared that "her precious baby" was *not* going to be named after some stupid computer part, nor after some science fiction book. There was some grumbling about saving her poor darling from the nerds, too.

What followed was a week of terrible turmoil, of a feud of artistic disagreement that tore our family into two bitterly opposed factions and Switzerland (my middle sister).

May father and I came up with, not in any particular order:

Sanskrit (it sounded nice, and suited him in a way we couldn't describe)
Rama (the moon god of India- it sounded nice and royal and suited his coloring)
Raja (my mother kept calling him her "prince" and saying what a royal name Simba was - she didn't buy the argument in reverse)
Yaweh (This went over even worse, and was suggested for the amusement value of her reaction)
Woden (the reaction was still amusing, if not quite as severe)
And a few others that I can't remember any more.

All told, (my father and I) did spend a solid week trying to come up with an unusual and special name for this cat... and we wound up with the most common and prosaic pet name of the year... Simba. From the instant it was suggested, however, my father and I knew the cause was lost... as my mother and my youngest sister loved it and they held all the votes between them. We were determined to resist, and we put up a good fight, but the conclusion was foregone.

However, we got some of ours back in the end. Every time my mother took him to the vet and they encountered a new assistant, the vet's assistant would say "Oh! You named him after the Lion King. How cute. Why, we just saw two cats named Simba and even a dog named Simba earlier today- the dog belonged to a little girl who named him Simba even though the real Simba was a cat- her mommy couldn't talk her out of it!" This would provoke my mother to explain in a frosty voice that he was named after the lead tiger in the famous circus... at which point the friendly vet's assistant would nod and smile condescendingly. No matter how many times my mother and youngest sister gave their frostily indignant explanations, they never fooled anyone!

He didn't keep his given name very long, either. As his personality (and his amazing clumsiness) began to express themselves, he was more often called "You dumbass cat!" or "You dumb animal!" Or, when you were *really* in a hurry to make him stop, just "Animal!" in a screetch of fury delivered at the top of one's lungs. This had the double benefit of usually causing him to stop in his tracks and crouch defensively and pissing off my mother.

Copyright © Courtney M. Eckhardt
March 12, 2000