Cat Names with Character

To name a cat is to write the first line of her portrait. A small canon of cat names drawn from art, for anyone still searching for one with character.

In the atelier cat names pass by every day, and the plaque beneath the frame never lies: a name colours the way you look at the animal. "Minoes" hangs differently on the wall than "Rembrandt". For anyone still searching — a new cat, a nameless shelter kitten — here are the names that hold up best on our workbench.

From painting: Rembrandt and Vermeer for toms with a dark, golden coat; Frida for a queen with a will of her own; Dalí for the cat who takes nothing into account. For something smaller: Easel sits awkwardly, but Brush was once granted to a white tom with a single grey tip to his tail.

From music: Chopin for the tender one, Puccini for the dramatic one, Nina — after Simone — for the queen with a voice that carries through walls. A Siamese almost always deserves a composer.

A tough-sounding cat name ages; a name with meaning grows along with her.

From literature: Murakami wrote cats into world literature, so Haruki is allowed. Tolstoy for the placid Brit, Carré for the cat who is always undercover somewhere. And the classics — Minoes, Felix, Tom — need feel no shame: they are the folk art among cat names.

Two pointers from practice. First: choose a name you dare to call out loud in a quiet street. Second: choose a name that still fits fifteen years on — kittens become cats, and "Baby" hangs awkwardly beneath a stately portrait.

— the atelier