He'd just had breakfast in a nearby hotel and came back to find a plastic bag outside the gate. Inside it was the body of one of my cats. “I think it must have eaten poison,” he said. “Probably a neighbor knew it was yours and put it there.”We were briefly hampered in identifying which of my 10 cats it was by the fact that Nico has abandoned the names I gave them and relabeled them all, regardless of gender, with the names of his old girlfriends. But in the end I get out of him that it was a large black cat with long hair and a triangle of white on her face. That triangle had reminded me of the markings of a capuchin monkey, and so I knew that it was the one that I had named Maymun (Monkey).
Poor Maymun. Two winters ago I came home to find her ensconced in front of the fire in my kitchen. There she sat and there she remained. She was neither a kitten nor wild like most of my interlopers. I concluded that she had probably had a previous owner who had either died, or moved away and left her behind. She was no trouble to me and so I let her stay.
But I'd reckoned without people's reaction to her new name. Whenever they heard me call her neighbors would look at me as if I'd sprouted a second head. But then this is not a community that is strong on naming its animal companions. Pet birds do tend to acquire monikers (Maviş if they're blue, Boncuk if they're green); dogs too, with Ateş and Efe big favorites. A fair few horses seem to be given names (I know of at least one Yıldırım [Thunderbolt]), although rarely their donkey substitutes. Cows and sheep, however, are a relentlessly name-free zone. No Clovers or Daisys placidly chewing the cud here. When I saw my neighbor bringing her cow back from the watering trough one day I asked her what its name was. “İnek” (Cow), she said, and you could see her silently thinking what a dolt I was for asking.
It was no better when İnek gave birth to a calf. It was a pretty little thing that sat beside a pile of cornflowers mingled with hay, a circlet of beads lovingly ringing her neck. So cute; surely she must have a name? “Dana” (Calf), my neighbor retorted scornfully.
Needless to say, my favorite party trick is reeling off the names of my menagerie for the entertainment of my neighbors. Not that I can always remember all of them, of course. It's the same at feeding time when I find myself wondering guiltily whether it's like this in big families -- do frazzled mothers run through a quick headcount before knuckling down to identify who exactly is missing from the breakfast table, which is certainly what I do with my brood? Sadly, I suppose it'll be that bit easier now with only nine to remember, although I can just anticipate the vet's reaction: “You've got a vacancy now, Pat…”
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
