Y'all know I'm a cat lover and have two of my own. I've told the story of how we named them before, but it was a long time ago, so here it is again:
The older one we named Audrey after Audrey Hepburn because she had such a beautiful face and huge "Bambi" eyes. It just seemed to fit.
The younger one is a sad but touching story: Back when we first got Audrey, we got another cat at the same time who reminded us of Cleopatra (very exotic looking), so we named her Cleo. She was our favorite (sorry, Audrey...), and we were always carrying her around and baby-talking her. Hence, we would call her "Ceo" in baby talk (pronounced Kio).
She and I had a tradition: every morning when I was getting ready for work, I would carry her around and let her try to touch things high up on the walls. She loved doing that. One morning we were doing our thing, and as she reached her paw up to bat something on the wall, she suddenly fell back into my arms with her eyes dilated, let out a long "roooowwwwwwwrrrrr....." and died. Just like that. The vet later said it was probably a brain aneurism because she couldn't find a thing wrong with her during the necropsy. In fact, she said Cleo was one of the healthiest cats she had ever seen (we took real good care of our cats, even had health insurance for them...). We cried for days.
After a suitable greiving period, we got another one to replace her (Audrey was so lonesome, and a cat should always have a companion). In trying to name her, we wanted to honor Cleo's memory, so I said "How about a form of Cleo 2, in baby talk?" Hence: Kiotu. Kiotu has a little bit of Siamese in her, so it was a perfect fit. She is now Daddy's little girl even more than her predecessor was.
As for funny names, I don't do that to my cats, but I do have a funny story from when I used to raise Chihuahuas. I liked to give each litter a bunch of unique names just for kicks. One litter of five puppies I named: "Consternation", "Sacrament", "Riboflavin", "Reverse", and "Bob".
Ironically, Riboflavin was the runt of the litter and died, and the little body was then eaten by the father. So after we got over the sadness, guess what.... you see it coming don't you....?
I said, "well, I guess he ate it because he needed a little more Riboflavin in his diet!"
