Helen never understood cat names. She regularly rolled her eyes when I spoke about the neighbour’s cats as ‘Wit’ or ‘Fall’—she always called them what their people have named them: Loki and Ewok.
I kept telling her that cat names had meanings, quite important ones, even though I’d never totally worked out the logic they use. There was one type of name that Miss Tan, my English teacher, would say is irony: Tenner’s largest kitten being called ‘Littlest’, for instance.
There was also a literal side that sometimes felt really heavy-handed, and that Miss Tan would definitely have circled in red if I put it in an essay. I would have bet, for example, that Tenner was either the tenth kitten of one litter, or the only kitten of her mother’s tenth litter. Our neighbour Mr Miller’s cat Wit (Loki)
