We all know that the Egyptians liked cats

[conuly]

And we have not only pictorial evidence that they kept pet cats but also records of them owning cats. Mostly, if their pets had individual names, they didn't record it, but the earliest known cat with its own name was called "Nedjem", which means "pleasant, sweet" or, as I prefer to think of it, "Sweetie".

Say it with me now: Awwwwww! ♥

Moving to another place and time, anybody who names their dog "Nameles" - or "Nameless", even - doesn't deserve to have a dog. WTF, Edward? Just because you're the Duke of Wherever doesn't give you the right to be so mean to your doggy.

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Comments

[wpadmirer]

My eyes are hazel (which is a green variant), and I've had my eyes be blue, brown, really green, etc. depending on the light. If it's really bright light - I look blue-eyed. I've had people comment on my "beautiful blue eyes" and I've quit trying to explain.

[conuly]

When my mother was in high school, her biology teacher, teaching genetics, explained that two people with blue eyes can't have a brown-eyed kid. And my mother, all innocent, raised her hand and asked "What about me? My father has gray eyes, and my mother's eyes are green, but my eyes are brown!"

Her teacher, apparently, stammered a bit and changed the subject, but it must've been weighing on her mind because a few days later she took my mother aside and said she'd done a great deal of research and two people with those eye colors could have a child with hazel eyes, and her eyes weren't really brown at all! And so they're not, in fact. She really does have hazel eyes! It was at this point that my mother says she got an idea of what her teacher thought she'd implied. No worries there. My mother had no doubt about her parentage. She looks a lot like her father. I look a bit like her mother, and in personality I'm a lot like my maternal grandfather, whom we believe was also autistic.

Anyway, long story short, I advise anybody teaching high school biology to stop using human traits as examples and instead pick some other animal, like cats. For one thing, half of all the traits listed in high school bio textbooks aren't actually heritable, like tongue rolling, and most of those which are heritable are far more complex than they're made out to be. And even if you actually use a bona fide example you run the risk of accidentally revealing a family secret or, if you give the poorly-thought-out assignment "compare your features to your parents!!!" making the adopted/foster children in your class feel excluded. High school students have enough problems already.

[wpadmirer]

Yeah, biology needs to be taught a different way. I have friends who've adopted from China and Africa. Assignments to look at their parents and compare what they've inherited would really fuck with them.

[robby]

When I decided to keep Dinah, it took me a few days to come up with a name. She was clearly waiting for a name though, and when I used it she immediately understood and accepted it. Perhaps my new name is similar to whatever her name had been?

[conuly]

Maybe! I bet she's happy to have a name.

[robby]

Yes, but her bed, her food, walks..... most everything makes her happy. One of her turn-offs is little dogs yapping at her.

[archersangel]

i like that about the ancient cat name.

[conuly]

I ever get another cat, I know what I'm calling it.

[ratcreature]

I admit I have some sympathies for the "Nameless" thing: in one couple of female rats I had, I completely failed to come up with a name for one of them, so I ended up just calling her "the other" and it stuck. I loved her as much as the named one, and I don't think the rat cared. It was really awkward with the vet forms though (as most rats in older age she needed lots of respiratory care and in her case also breast cancer treatment).

[conuly]

Okay, sure... but would you really put it on a list of acceptable rat names?

[ratcreature]

Probably not. Though I guess it's destigmatizing to share? Now thanks to him putting it down, I know that in the Middle Ages people totally failed at pet naming too.

[conuly]

There are some things I'd rather not know.

[greghousesgf]

I wanna see a list of acceptable rat names now.

[gingicat]

I know a youth therapist who watches Girls Incarcerated. She used to work at a residential school (not a jail), for troubled teens, a facility that was, in fact, designed to keep said teens out of prison. She says that the girls on the show are pretty much exactly like the girls from the school.

http://www.youthvillages.org/services/residential-programs/germaine-lawrence-campus

[lusentoj]

Didja know? Vikings also had pet cats and the cats even went on long boat journeys with them... says something I read somewhere in some museum in Sweden I believe... But we have no idea what those cats were like, they might've been more like tamed lynxes.

[conuly]

I believe it! Cats on ships help keep away rats.

[isis]

The "killer vacation" story was fascinating!

[thewayne]

Our current senior poodle who is all of 7(?), when we got him at the age of 2, his name was still Puppy. An entirely unacceptable name. He was immediately named Dante.

His predecessor's full name was Celestial Princess Dark Star, and was called Star. We preferred Celeste, and thus she became.

Charlie, our other poodle, his full name is Desert Oasis Charlie Brown, I frequently call him Sir Charles of Wigglesbutt. He doesn't just wag his tail, his tail wagging causes his entire back end to vibrate.

Aside from "Puppy", those were AKC registration names. We got the dogs from a rescue org.

[greghousesgf]

I heard that goober peas song was actually a protest song, confederate soldiers had to eat nothing but (or mostly) peanuts for long periods of time and were sick of them.
I really admire Jimmy Carter, he's still very active in charity work while a lot of ex-presidents just sit around on their butts and/or get paid big bucks to make an occasional short speech.

[conuly]

I heard that goober peas song was actually a protest song, confederate soldiers had to eat nothing but (or mostly) peanuts for long periods of time and were sick of them.

That's a possibility, and some variations of the song definitely support that.

The folk process is wonderful, but what it isn't is consistent. It's common for songs to have multiple origin stories.

[greghousesgf]

blues songs are the same way, there are about a million versions of Stagger Lee for example.

[gale_storm]

'often translated as "he or she who mews".'

Love it!

And I've that graphic of the tapestry (or whichever it was -- knowing the diff between the techniques doesn't serve my memory as to which was used here in the slightest!) on my desktop in semi-regular rotation!

[conuly]

'often translated as "he or she who mews".'

Love it!

Miu, miu, miu! I smell a rat close by.

[smokingboot]

I'm not convinced America knows how to deal with an American bully...