A funny thing about our cats – we knew their names before we met them. Cat Mom had always dreamed of adopting cats. It just took her a little while to convince Cat Dad that it was his dream too.  As Cat Mom and Cat Dad talked more and began imagining what it would be like to add a cat to their family, they began thinking about names.  Somehow, whenever Cat Mom and Cat Dad were ready to adopt a new cat, they already had the purrfect name picked out for the cat that captured their hearts.

Parker was named after Richard Parker in Life of Pi. For those of you who are not familiar with the book or the film, Richard Parker is a Bengal tiger. Cat Mom and Cat Dad both have a quirky sense of humor and thought it would be fun to name a cat after a huge Bengal tiger. When Cat Mom first spotted Parker available for adoption, she was named “Kiera”. “Kiera” was very skinny and she learned that “Kiera” was rescued off of the streets as a stray.  Cat Mom watched “Kiera” walk over to her food bowl and carefully pick out one piece of dry food and eat it before she moved on to pick out the next piece. That’s when Cat Mom decided that she had found her Parker. She knew she wanted to help Parker become healthy and strong like Richard Parker and that she is. Parker definitely holds a special place in both Cat Mom and Cat Dad’s hearts for this reason. As you all know, we don’t only refer to Parker as “Parker”, but she’s also our little “Parker bunny”.  Not only does Parker have a cute little pink bunny nose and bunny-like ears, she will often hop over Lily or Jasmine to get to where she wants to go.

If you’re a fan of the television show “Modern Family”, then you’re also a fan of the character “Lily”, who is the adopted daughter of Mitch and Cameron. “Lily” is not only cute but quite the charmer and knows how to keep her parents’ on their toes. The same can be said of our Lily, also known as “Lily Bear”, “Lily-Kins” and “Tiger Lily”.  When Cat Mom first spotted Lily, it was in a photo that the shelter posted of Lily with her siblings and her fur momma.  Lily was sitting right next to her mom looking up at the camera with her head tilted to the side.  Lily’s unique mask-like face markings and that face tilt captured Cat Mom’s heart in an instant.  Lily was a charmer from day one and that has not changed since.  Lily still knows how to turn up the charm to level 100 in an instant – be it with her meows or her Lily flops.  Funnily enough though, Lily’s sibling in the photo was named “Lily”.  Clearly though, our Lily was meant to be named Lily.  One of the moments we knew that it was meant to be was when we were leaving our veterinarian’s office after one of Lily’s first visits.  All of the vet tech’s lined up to pet Lily and say good-bye.  It was quite the scene made over our little Lily.

As for Jasmine, you might initially think we named her after the Disney princess from Aladdin.  In a way, you are kind of right 🙂  Cat Mom and Cat Dad are indeed Disney fans, but we actually named Jasmine after Jasmine Beckett-Griffith, one of our favorite artists, whose subjects are often Disney princesses.  Some of her work also contain dragons that reminded Cat Dad of cats.  Cat Dad and Cat Mom were lucky enough to meet the artist once and had the opportunity to ask her about her dragons and in fact she said that they were based on cats.   When Cat Mom asked what they would possibly name another cat if they were to adopt again, Cat Dad suggested “Jasmine” and Cat Mom immediately fell in love with the idea.  When Cat Mom held Jasmine in her arms for the first time, she knew that she had met her “Jasmine”.  Of course, Jasmine also goes by “Jazzy” and “Spazzy Jazzy” because she is definitely still a spazzy kitten.

Besides their given names and nicknames, all of our cats also answer to “kitten” and “sweetheart” because, of course, each of them are all of the above to us both.