Anton Dexter Maximus

Our new cat is going to end up with a complex if we keep changing his name. Of course, we could just continue to add to his name and make it super long like our dog’s which is Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds William Shatner Version 2.0 (With Ben Folds).

Naming any animal is difficult. I mean, for us, we had the name Lucy picked out before we even saw her and amazingly when the whole litter (or the eight puppies that were left anyway) came out to greet us we immediately knew which one we wanted and immediately knew that Lucy would fit her perfectly. What little did we know that her sweet puppy temperament would turn into an adult version of Lucy from The Peanuts.

But this post is about Anton, who after a little less than a week we renamed Dexter. So when I went into work the following day after my partner decided on the name and changed everything Anton to Dexter in his vet chart, I did so thinking the decision had been made. A few days later he starts calling him Max. What the hell? Pick a name already! It was hard enough for me not to call him Anton after doing so for weeks at the clinic while he was up for adoption. I had just gotten used to the idea of calling him Dexter, Dex for short, when he up and wants to change the name again?

I feel a compromise is needed. The only way I see fit to resolve the issue at hand is to simply make all these names part of his. Not nearly as long as our dog’s name, which is simply the title and artists of a song, but more like a person’s first, middle and last name. Perhaps then it won’t be such a big deal to me because, well, we all know that cats don’t give a crap what you call them as long as you feed and water them. Which, now that I’ve mentioned water, I find it odd that Dexter likes to hop in the shower whenever I turn the water on. Makes me wonder if he was indeed a stray who drank from gutters and leaking faucets because he laps up the water if you turn it down to a trickle. I find it amusing that we have a dog who’s afraid of water and cat who likes to be in the bathtub.

Anyway, I think I’m going to make a decision here to call him Anton Dexter Maximus. That way I can call him Dexter, as a nod to my Dad’s side of the family of boys being called by their middle names, and my partner can call him Max. And if he ever does anything horrible, I’ll probably use the full name, but I can’t imagine him doing so. Perhaps clawing the couch or something. That reminds me, we really need to get him a scratching post!