Terms of Endearment

Every person who has a pet gives it a name to personify and help to identify it as an individual. You pick one name you think suits the animal and that is its name forevermore. Or so you'd think. Pretty much everyone also gives their animals nicknames which can evolve over time.

Petal was my first real foray into the world of animal aliases. Everyone who knows me knew that most of the time I called Petal 'Precious'. My mom used to roll her eyes whenever I referred to Petal as Precious; probably because it was linked in her mind to The One Ring and the way Gollum refers to it as his Precious. Or it could be the association to Silence of the Lambs in which Wild Bill's toy poodle was named Precious (remember how girl captive pulled Precious into the hole and the dog's leg was broken? Sniff). Or it could have been the way I said 'Precious' - sort of a high pitched drawn out 'Preeeeciiiooouuuss'. Anyway, for years everyone who ever met me and Petal knew that Precious was Petal and Petal was Precious. Her urn even reads 'My Precious Petal' ...

Halo hasn't ever really had a nickname. I'm not sure why. Nothing ever came to me except when she had puppies and then I referred to her as 'Momma' for obvious reasons. I still sometimes call her Momma but not very often - usually when she's doing something motherly to her boys like cleaning or disciplining them. To me Halo always seemed a little too dignified for a cutesie moniker. Which brings us to Raimi. When Raimi was born he was one boy in a house of girls; me, Halo, Petal and Ceilidh, so naturally I started calling him Boy. Eventually he became The Boy and it stuck. I have even had people at dog parks ask me if his name really was Boy because it seemed so generic - fortunately I'm used to weird looks. It has gotten to the point that using the name Raimi is almost pointless since he responds much better to Boy. This is possibly because I use the word Boy so affectionately that he always listens to it.

And Leeloo. It would follow that Leeloo's nickname is weird. I don't often refer to her by her nickname on the blog probably because of all the nicknames my dogs have hers is the strangest. When I got Leeloo she naturally responded very well to 'Puppy'. We'd go to the park and I'd call "Puppy Puppy Leeloo Puppy" to try and teach her to come to her actual name. Since I didn't like using Puppy I changed it to Bubba (which some people call puppies instead of 'puppy'). Bubba didn't roll off the tongue easily so I changed it to Bubby. That stuck for quite a long time until this past summer. I had a flash of brilliance and one day Bubby morphed into Bubbalicious and it has since stuck like, well, bubblegum. I call her Bubbalicious almost exclusively in the house and sometimes it slips out in public. Usually we are deep in a silent forest or on a desrted beach so there is no one to politely ignore the reference.

Archer doesn't have a nickname yet but I'm sure one will come - maybe Pogo? It has to happen organically - you can't force a Precious or a Bubbalicious. Nicknames are very individual and are often created based on the dog's personality which almost makes them more suitable than their actual names.
The cats? They are often at the receiving end of "Bad Kitteh!" so I guess that is their communal nickname. Oh wait - Ceilidh gets an occasionally 'Tubby' thrown in for good measure.