We don’t know about you, but we’re always looking for ways to drop little nuggets of superiority amongst our friends and loved ones. The best way we’ve found so far is to name your cat after a literary character so people know that you can—and have—read a book. Let me tell you, buying a cat just to let everyone know you’re a smart person is well worth the smell! Here are our literary moniker picks for your feline friends:
1. Clifford
What better way to lord your impressive and consistent reading over people’s heads than by reminding them you have been a bibliophile (that means reading-freak) since childhood. You loved to read Clifford the Big Red Dog then and you love to read everything, all the time now. In fact, sometimes you’ll go back and re-read the Clifford books with your Siamese just for fun, just like you do Catcher in the Rye “every once in a while.” Naming your cat Clifford is a congratulations on lifelong literacy! Me-ow!
2. Rosencrantz
To be or not to be okay with rubbing this cat’s name in people’s faces? After you name your cat Rosencrantz, a minor character from Hamlet, you can start practicing saying clever things like, “Yes, I do know who Shakespeare is! He is a writer of things I have read.” And hell yeah, he is! Everyone who names their cat something dumb like Molly or Fluffy can jump off a cliff—and land on a library!
3. Mr. Darcy
You’re so into Jane Austen, you might as well be living the life of a spinster in the 1800s. Not only did you understand every single nuanced word of Pride and Prejudice, you also figured out that no real man is able to compete with Mr. Darcy. But that’s where your aptly named American Shorthair comes in! You read this book, which makes you better than other cat owners.
4. Incandenza
If you name your cat Incandenza, you are basically daring someone to question if you are capable of reading. That’s because Incandenza comes from Infinite Jest, a book that has over 1,000 pages—no big deal. Just kidding, it’s a huge fucking deal. If you Google “big word books” it comes up, so suck on that, cats named after plants like “Juniper” or “Rose.” You are literal trash.
5. Kierkegaard
This one says, “Wow. You really need this, don’t you?” which is perfect because yes, you need books more than you need oxygen, thanks so much for asking. This is a good name to weed out the dum-dums. If you can’t pronounce Kierkegaard, you don’t even deserve to change Kierkegaard’s cat litter. Like Kierkegaard, you’re an existentialist, which basically means if you don’t name your cat after something from literature, you deserve to have to eat a book and then die because the book was poisoned and then smart cats eat your remains. It’s so cute how much you love to read!
Whether you choose to go with a cat name that will just hint at your knowledge of Penguin Classics or a name that drives home you are a scholarly scholar whose eyes are seeing bound pages constantly, you’ll still seem like someone who has seen, touched, and read at least one book. That’s just who you are, and it’s time someone besides your cat knows it!
