Can you imagine trying to think of enough different names for the inhabitants of a small town? Even worse, you're not allowed to use any name more than once. Difficult, isn't it? Well that's what we have to do every time our cats produce more litters. It gets tougher when so many of them look alike. How many times have you named a black cat, Blacky? Or called a cat with white paws, Socks? Or named a tiger stripe, Tiger?

In years past I've had a cat or two and it was easy to name her with what I felt at the time. Usually, the appearance of the animal suggests a good name. Or, you name it after your Teddy Bear, no problem. But, since moving in with my husband, I've entered a time warp. He says that, in the past twelve years, he's had to name upwards of six hundred individual animals. It all started with one stray cat a little over twelve years ago. Just like Genesis, one begat four, four begat sixteen, and so on. The normal litter is four kittens; we sometimes get one or two, but we've had several with seven bright, healthy, cute-as-can-be, kittens. Each one needs a good name.

Our best method for names is movies and TV shows. Whatever we happen to be watching when a litter is born can provide several names. This way we can remember which cat belongs to which litter. Each litter, then suggests a particular theme. When we saw the movie Serenity, we names those kittens Inara, Mal, Kaylee, etc. Right now we are watching the Civil War so some of our kittens will have the names of generals. If we need more names we'll start using the battle names, even splitting one name for two kittens. Like Gettys and Burg will take care of two kitties' names, or Bull and Run. Guess "Bull" should be a male, huh? We are always looking for suggestions. I guess we could start naming the kittens using names from the Bible. We'll name the first one Begat.

The names of the latest litter: Tonto, Yvette, Alejandro, Dominique, Brady, Inara, and Bogart.