Poetry Sunday! Thankfully None Of Mine!

 I thought, since I had quoted part of Eliot's poem about naming cats, to look up the whole thing.  So, here it is!  In effect, an open thread!

How did Ethyl come to be Ethyl? The decision is lost to time but  her full name was Methyl Ethyl Ketone.  She was adopted from the local shelter, without her toenails. Cats so altered often make adjustments to life.  One of those is a tendency to bite.  To tell the truth she was a bit of a biter. She was a genuine nut and we had her for over ten years.  She was no kitten when we got her.

Naming is a thing to take seriously!  It's a subject of its own.  If I had named her Linda would she still have been as strange?  I don't know.

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Meow?

The Naming of Cats

T. S. Eliot
1888 –
1965

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names,
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name.