The naming of cats is a difficult matter, it isn’t just one of your holiday games. You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter when I tell you a cat must have three different names. First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily, such Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James, such Victor, or Johnathan, George or Bill Baily, all of them sensible every day names. There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter, some for the gentlemen, some for the dames, such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter, but all of them sensible every day names.
But I tell you a cat needs a name that’s particular, a name that’s peculiar and more dignified. How else can he keep up his tail perpendicular or spread out his whiskers or cherish his pride? Of names of this kind I can give you a quorum, such as Munkunstrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat, such as Bombalurina or else, Jellylorem. Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond, there is still one name leftover, and that is the name that you never will guess. A name that no human research can discover but the cat himself knows and will never confess. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, the reason, I tell you, is always the same: his mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name. His ineffable, effable, effanineffable, deep, and inscrutible, singular, name.
rough exerpt, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, T.S. Elliot