A Rose by Any Other Name

My wife is a wise person. She assesses those things that are important and those things that are not and leaves the latter to me. For example, with our pets she lets me take the lead in providing them with names while she concentrates on their health and nutritional needs. She saw no reason that we should deviate from this successful strategy with our new puppy.

I do have a long resume in naming pets. As a child I named all my pets. There were actually two. Buster was my first dog. I named him after a children's program character I was enraptured with at the time. Buster was a ratter that my father acquired for us to keep our house free from the rats. The rats migrated down the alleys from the old Union Stock Yards in Chicago to the homes of people like us who lived nearby. The problem was that dogs that are hunters and children don't mix. Inevitably he bit me when I made the mistake of trying to pet him while he was eating. Good bye Buster.

Rusty came next. She was the pet that helped me through adolescence, puberty and early adulthood. She was a rust colored collie mix - okay I wasn't too original - that a neighbor gave to me because I expressed my admiration for how attractive she was. She was literally handed to me on the street. Bringing her home didn't make my mother's day after the Buster experience but my father interceded. Rusty saw me through many trying times and lived to be fifteen years old. She died while I was away at college. Her passing seemed to be a right of passage.

In college my roommate brought two cats from the family farm, a young male and a kitten. This was curious since our apartment lease did not allow pets. Fortunately, cats are easier to hide as long as you keep the litter box clean. Once again it fell to me to name them. My roommate had better things to do like hang out at the tavern and run up a big bar tab. The older one I named Robespierre because I thought it showed my recently acquired erudition. Falling back on my Rusty strategy, the little kitten I named Whiskers for obvious reasons. My roommate flunked out and left me with the cats. Where he came from it seems there was a rule that he failed to inform me about that if you named the animals you kept them. Ultimately my girl friend, now wife, took them home and that is where they lived out their lives.

It was a crowded home for Robespierre and Whiskers as my wife had a cat of her own back home, Nicki. A name she chose without my help. My wife's parents believed in letting the cats outside to do what cats do. Consequently, Nicki became pregnant the same year we graduated from college and were married. There were four kittens in the litter. I named them Frisky, a tortoise-shell, Misty, a long-haired grey cat, Urban, a long-haired black cat and Sylvan, a Maine Coon like cat. Frisky was a playful kitten and the first tortoise-shell cat I had ever seen. Misty's fur had the light airy color of a summer's mist. Sylvan's name was chosen because it reflected my wife's rural background. I chose Urban because he and Sylvan were the two males and I thought it clever to contrast the two since I was the city boy. Remember, I was a recent college graduate.

We found homes for Misty and Urban and my wife and I took Frisky and Sylvan into our first home as newlyweds. There they stayed with us for seventeen years. Ultimately Sylvan died from complications from an operation for a tumor on his tail. Frisky seemed to mourn herself to death and suffered a stroke four months later. We had to put her to sleep.

Next came Woodrow. He was another Maine Coon like cat that we adopted from our veterinarian. At the time we were enamored with the television series Lonesome Dove. Woodrow McCall was my favorite character. You can surmise the rest.

With both of us working little Woodrow was very lonely in our apartment. We decided to get him some "pets". Our vet had two kittens available. Augustus and Daphne came into our lives. Augustus, aka Gus, was of course the compliment to Woodrow from Lonesome Dove. Daphne's name was meant to be ironic. She was a runt with a deformed rear and a hernia on her stomach. The vet was surprised we would adopt her. It was clear to us though that she and her brother were very close. We had always regretted not having taken all four of Nicki's kittens. So what the heck. Three cats were no more trouble than two, we hoped.

Woodrow developed a heart condition and passed away from the stress that we experienced after September 11th and the resulting displacement. He was nine at the time. The vet said that if it was any consolation he probably would not have lived much longer. It wasn't.

Gus and Daphne were eleven years old when Hamilton came into their lives. Which brings me to why the name Hamilton? First, I hate cutesy names for animals. No Spot, Rover, Fluffy or heaven forbid Tiger. As it happened when we adopted our puppy I was reading a biography of Alexander Hamilton. The revolutionary era is a historical period I've always been interested in. More serendipitously our apartment is only a few blocks from his grave in the Trinity Church historical cemetery. I am a great believer in serendipity. I met my wife serendipitously at college, of which I attended due to the serendipitous factor that my aunt's best friend's daughter had attended there and enjoyed the experience. The chain is nearly endless. Plus Hamilton is a serious name, one that no one would bestow lightly.

When your dog is named Hamilton it reinforces to people that this is a dog to whom much is given and much is expected. He is a dog who is loved and respected as a thinking, feeling, caring animal enriching our lives.