Great Minds And All That

An aside in Stephen Green’s column You Don’t Need a Study to Know That Pets Are Good for Your Kids’ Health:

“Besides,” I added, “my cat Dingo thinks he’s a dog. He drools and fetches. Seriously.”

Apparently that was a good enough answer, because we’ve been together ever since that night.

ASIDE: Dingo was short for Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastián d’Anconia Green, named after the Atlas Shrugged character because they both had black hair and an attitude problem. I had to shorten his name to Dingo instead of Frisco because I didn’t want to correct countless assumptions that I’d given him the same horrible nickname as the city I used to live in.

I never did announce the names of the kittens we rustled in October. We did name one Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, shortened to Nico.

The other?

Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastián d’Anconia. Although we have shortened it to Cisco instead of Frisco. And, yes, I have memorized the whole name, although I am pretty sure his official records and microchip all say Cisco (I joked that it would have taken a second chip to get the whole name between his shoulder blades).

Currently, Cisco is wearing the collar as he was neutered but last week. He had an undescended testicle, and the vet hoped waiting would let it descend on its own (it did not). So he has had his share of other nicknames, including Solo, Paint Can (if you shake him, you can hear a marble inside), and other things. Now that he’s in a cone, though, the only nickname we’ve given him is Starlink (unlike Roark back in the day.

And, yes, that does bring us to four cats named for Rand characters (the other two were Galt and Dominique). Far and away the best represented mythos among many and many opportunities to name cats over the years.

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