Go Fish Galvez

Introducing the newest member of our little island family, a four-month-old gray tabby with white socks on her hind feet and an admirably fearless personality, recently adopted from the Galveston Humane Society.

Okay, you say, but what’s her name?

Well, for the past week, since I picked her up and brought her home eight days ago, that’s been the number one question I’ve been laboring to answer.

And as I discovered, this cat-naming business can be quite a process!

In the beginning, my idea was to come up with an exotic, “islandy” kind of name, perhaps something with a Balinese flavor, which could handily double as my tiny tabby homage to the old Balinese Room, a piece of lost Galveston history to which I will always have fond, and forever memorable, ties.

Working on that approach, and using Google as my tireless research assistant, I zeroed in on a number of Indonesian possibilities, including names such as Ibu (“lady,” “mother”), Suka (“joy,” “happiness”), Pagi (“morning”), Janji (“promise”), and Kasih (“love”). Among the choices, there was one more that I very nearly succumbed to: Lalat, a lovely, lilting name that translates (unfortunately) to the less-than-lovely “housefly” (which meaning I thought I could nevertheless justify, since a tabby cat is just about as common as a, well, you get it).

But then it seemed I was worrying this too much and thought maybe I should just cave and take the easy, mindless pet-naming road, i.e., pick a physical characteristic of the beast and then come up with a name to match. This, of course, is the absurdly lazy route I took when naming Tip (for the white tip on the end of her tail).

Still, this approach was not without its downside, too. Having been reprimanded, if ever so gently, by my big sister for expending so little effort in choosing a name for my very first dog, I figured she’d be none too happy if I took a similar path and named the new kitten “Socks.” Tit for tat, Tip for Socks. Could have been. Almost was.

In the end, though, after innumerable Internet searches and seemingly endless vacillation, I happened upon a fun little website that listed a selection of useful Cajun words and phrases.

Now here’s an interesting idea, I thought.

Louisianans are our relatively close kin (witness the Strand, if you have any doubts), and I have always delighted in listening to the mesmerizing, melodic cadences of the fanciful Cajun dialect.

A quick scan through the possibilities listed on this helpful little website immediately revealed the most perfect, and certainly most obvious, cat name of all: “Minou” (say “mee-noo”), the Cajun word for “kitty.” Purrr-fect!

One more little fun factoid concerning the newest addition to the Cote clan: Having been born somewhere on Galveston Island back in February of this year makes Minou the first bona fide BOI (“Born On the Island”) member of the family, joining Tip and me, the resident IBCs (“Islanders By Choice”), to round out our happy little Disney-movie triumvirate.

Welcome home, Minou!