More names Turnip for dogs, cats

My husband and I were watching an improv show on television last week where the comedians were asked in one skit to act out terrible dog names.

An actress whistled and yelled, “Help! Help!”

That would be a really bad dog name.

My faithful readers might be rolling their eyes about now because this is my third column in the past few months about pet names, but I just keep hearing them.

A woman walking in my neighborhood had a pretty dog, and I asked her what the dog’s name was. “Turnip,” she said, spelled like the vegetable.

She said Turnip came from an older woman who lived out in the country in Harrison, who said the dog just “turned up.”

Thus, Turnip. Everyone remembers her name, her owner said, and she is a pretty dog.

One of my readers, Beverly, said she was reminded, when she read one of my dog-name columns, about a neighbor of hers years ago who had two dogs, Cheap and Worthless.

“I would be outside in the yard and would hear her calling, “Cheap! Worthless!” at the top of her lungs. “So funny,” the woman wrote.

Another of our faithful subscribers, Patricia, sent me an email about many of the former dogs in her life. Her emails are long, funny and well-written; she could write her own book about life.

Most of this column will be brought to you by Patricia. (I probably need to send her a check.)

“I’ve always loved dogs, especially the incredibly talented ones in my childhood favorite author’s books, Albert Payson Terhune,” she wrote. “Because of him, my heart’s desire has been to have a collie. Didn’t happen. Never gonna happen. God keeps sending me dogs with incredibly undetermined heritage.”

Patricia also told me about her “beloved Two-fifteen, affectionately known as Two.” The corgi-dachshund was adopted from the Pulaski County Humane Society by a couple a few weeks before they skipped out and left her in a mobile home.

“I told the friend who brought her to me I’d always wanted a collie, but God sent me a sausage,” she wrote.

I told you Patricia was funny. Anyway, she wasn’t having any luck deciding on a new name, so “I thought I’d just call her the first thing that popped into my head the next time she came into the room,” Patricia wrote. “That thought was inexplicably the number 215. I can’t tell you how many times I was asked if that was the time I got her. It wasn’t, so I figured I needed to come up with an explanation that would ward off all the clock watchers. I started going through until I found something that suited her — 2 Corinthians 2:15.

“So now when asked if 215 was

the time I got my dog, I can reply it is a Bible verse. And you know what? Only one person in all the 19 years I was fortunate enough to have her asked what the Bible verse was, my older nephew.

“After she went to that big dog park in the sky, the pain was so unbearable, I told God if he intended for me to have another pet, he was going to have it come up on the front porch and ring the doorbell. That was Sunday. Wednesday, my doorbell rang. It was my mailman, and, no he wasn’t looking to become my next pet, but he had found and showed me a photo of my poor beaten-up, nearly dead Jackson. He wanted to know if I knew anyone who would take in that dog. I didn’t hesitate. After all, it was the sign I’d asked for.”

Patricia was also the owner of several cats throughout her life, most with normal names, she said, except a few. Once she had a male cat named Rosebud (from the movie

Citizen Kane), and You, a kitten she found who was sick and half dead.

“When I’d open the door from the laundry room to go into the garage, I’d say, “Hey! You!” and he’d pop his little head out of his cardboard-box condo to greet me. Since he wasn’t supposed to live long, I declined to give him a proper name. By the time of his miraculous recovery, the name had stuck. He lived 21 years,” she said.

Then she had the cat named Roy’sKitty.

“My parents strongly disapproved of having animals in the house. My husband and I not only brought them in; we let them sleep with us, too. Since I wasn’t raised that way, but my husband was, I became a convert. My mom fussed at us every time we took in another cat or dog,” Patricia said.

So when she got yet another cat, she just told her mother it was “Roy’sKitty.” Roy was a friend. Finally, after about a year, Patricia’s mother asked when Roy was going to come get his cat. That would be never. “Roy’sKitty lived with us 19 years,” Patricia said.

She had more, many more pets. I’ll save them for another column. And I’ll add the ones you dear readers will surely send me.