A -- Alphabet

A is for alphabet, the basis of this A-Z blogging challenge.

Every year since 2013, more and more bloggers have taken a challenge to write 26 posts going through the alphabet for their topics and publishing on a regular schedule.

Well, we didn't get started in time to do that in April, but we can do it now. So here we go.

Some countries, such as France, have a tradition that kittens born in a certain year should get names starting with the same letter; they are on a twenty-year cycle. The letters K, Q, W, X, Y, and Z are skipped, and A last appeared in 2005 and 1985. That means 2016 is the year of the M cats; the aimable cats of The M Cats are not named for the year of the name.

Some letters are also skipped in tropical storm names. For the North Atlantic, only A-W are used, and Q and U are skipped. The Eastern North Pacific also skips Q and U, but they have X,Y,Z names that alternate every year while A-W rotate every six years. The Central North Pacific (Hawaii region) only uses letters used in Hawaiian. But I digress. Let's get back to cats and kitty names.

Our human has never followed that tradition of the year of the M cat; he tried to give us kitten names that somehow reflected our appearance or personality. I was Whiteneck, and my grey sister was Greyneck (before we became Friendly Cat and Pretty Grey Cat). My black sister was Dark Lady. Our tuxedo littermate had a glassy eye; his kitten name was Columbo. Then it cleared up. Since he liked climbing our human, he was named for Sir Edmond Hillary (or was that Edmund?) -- Sir Ed. Big sister Blackie was the only black kitten in her litter, with Tabby-tha, Little Smudge (who looked like our mother Smudge), and Rico. Rico was a one-eyed cat longer than the rest of them, and the french word for one-eyed borgne sounds like the name of Major League outfielder Rico Brogna. Butler and Parker had kitten names describing their noses -- Booger and Pinky -- and the first letter was kept for both of those names. Mama Kitty's litter that spring was also based on appearance -- Two Ruffles (which became Truffles almost immediately), Stripe, Kiwi (All Black -- she did not have a white ruffle), and Inky was the last black cat in her litter. Even Sandy and Fluffy, the long-haired light orange kittens he knew as a child, were named for their appearance.

I know we had a recent post about how we got our names back in February. What do you think of using the alphabet to assign kitty names by year? or by litter? any other ideas? I'd love to see your comments.