Vicky & Shmoggleberry

Shmoggleberry started off as "Spooky" as he turned up at 12 midnight and looked exactly like a teenager version of the cat of my youth, Snoopy. But "Spooky" just didn't fit the odd little furball that had captured my heart (and my sinuses!).

Spooky was renamed "Moggy" (refer to the recent thread about that), and is still known as "Mog" at the vet's because the receptionist kept saying "pardon?" when I kept repeating "MO" for her. Because ShmogleberMOsmokey colour, I started making a joke by calling him "Smoggy", which soon became "Shmoggy", because its easier for me to pronounce.

At the time, the group of friends I was hanging around expressed "extra" or "special" by adding "berry" after a word. So for example the ice-cream was extremely nice rather than just good, it was "very-berry nice", if something was exceptionally groovy it was "cool-berries", and if something was the consummate example of that thing, eg. U2 being the ultimate pop-group (am I giving away my age???) then it was musical-berry. I guess its like people putting "way" in front of everything eg., "way cool", "way groovy", "way huge", etc.

Being the ultimate cat (both in my and his eyes), we got to "Shmoggy-berry", which didn't quite come off the tongue very well, so I hardened the "o" from the "dog" sound to the "rode" sound, had to get rid of a "g" to make it spell right, and added the "le" sound, because I've always liked the sound of words like "little" and "giggle". I knew that let was the right name, because it suited the mad-cap cat owned me, and besides which, it stuck and all previous names didn't.

let also flirted with the name "Hairy Knockwurst on legs", as this is what he looked like lying completely stretch out on the floor when it got really hot. His tail reached the back of his head as he stretched out to expose & cool his tummy. However, he's only ever called that when he's completely stretched out like that on the absolute hottest days of summer, otherwise he just sleeps like a normal cat (?).

And this is from a person who swore black-and-blue before let turned up that my cat would be called "Pushka". Cats, like Teddy bears, always seem to name themselves anyway. You just have to listen very carefully and wait until they are ready to tell you.

Copyright © Vicky Chapman
August 23, 1998