Maine Coon: Al. A stray we took in. He was hanging around my MIL’s house, underweight and matted but already declawed, and eventually she started putting food out for him, with predictable results. Her cat didn’t like him, so he came to us, where he eventually filled out and grew so long he’s capable of taking up half of a 3-person couch.
She told us when she found him: “He told me his name is Al Franken.” Yes, the cat told her his name. :eek: She says really loopy stuff sometimes, bless her heart. We basically shrugged and shortened it to Al.
We shoulda re-named him Murphy. He makes a sound just like that sometimes, almost a low woof. (This is a cat, remember.)
Gray-and-white kitteh: Nikki. also found by MIL, except this one was around 5 weeks old at the time, a lost, starving orphan crying under some bushes in the rain. (OK, technically, my MIL’s beagle found her. Beagles are good at finding things and no, she didn’t hurt the kitten.)
Named her Nikki, because one night we were idly watching Jeff Corwin on Animal Planet and he called to one of his pets (filming @ home) and we just turned to each other and said, “Nikki. I like the sound of that.”
She almost wound up being named Molly, because she had a terrible case of ringworm on her face when she was found. With apologies to Molly Ringwold…
(Sorry, no pics - bad hard drive, bad! You just HAD to crash, huh?)
Fun pet-name-related story: for a while there we had two male Maine Coons, Al plus another even bigger guy named Clint. (Previous owners had named him after Clint Eastwood - apparently he made a squinty face on the drive home and was immediately so dubbed.) The one time I lugged both of them to the vet at the same time, I told the receptionist their names and was immediately accosted by a tiny little old lady in the waiting room, who wanted to know with a very disappointed and disapproving tone if I’d named them after Bill Clinton and Al Gore. I assured her that no such heathenry was involved (why yes, I do live in staunch Republican country, why do you ask?) and told her about Clint … but didn’t have the heart to tell her about Al. 