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 as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,

Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—

     All of them sensible everyday 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 everyday names,

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,

     A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,

Else how 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 Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,

Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—

     Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,

     And that is the name that you never will guess;

The 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 inscrutable singular name.

I don’t think the task of naming me

fell to my father because they thought

the sex of the child was decided by the sperm—

I don’t think they knew that. They thought that giving

a name was a big deal, so it should be

a man who did it—and my mother was grieving,

her Father in heaven had given her

another daughter. In the room where new parents

pay and check out, they won’t let you take

your baby home if you haven’t named her.

I think there would have been a flourish,

a flash for the nurses in his dark brown eyes,

a delay as he closed his eyes and held his

frat-boy finger above the open

Bible, then brought his digit down into the

creek-bed of eros, the laid-open

lady book, and touched my name.

This morning I wondered if it was on purpose

he opened the book way back in war,

in Kings and Numbers, letting the Psalms

and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes go by,

good-bye to Isaiah and Jeremiah,

and stopped, blind, at the narrow window

of a song—the slot for the crossbow’s arrow

between turret bulges—he touched my name among

the roses and the lilies, I rose up

under my father’s thumb, and his fruit was

sweet to my taste, and the shade of his presence

has been all my life a rich and enduring night.