Talk:1535: Words for Pets

I skipped the first step by naming my cat "Cat". On the plus side, even in the third year I was still mostly calling her by her name. --108.162.254.134 08:06, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

My cat is also named "Cat". Then again, I call all cats "Cat". 108.162.210.138 19:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Not sure this is relevant enough to include, but there's a trope about that 188.114.111.224 11:39, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I interpreted this slightly differently. In the first year, the pet is fresh and new, and you put the effort in to call it by its name. As time goes on, you get sloppier about it. In addition, I believe he missed a ring from it: Expletives. Within a year of having a new cat, I was calling it more by expletives than its name. Drmouse (talk) 14:24, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I thought expletives were deliberately implied, so I'm very surprised they are not mentioned in the explanation. 198.41.239.231 23:50, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I disagree with the explanation. The comic is about words used to refer to the pet, i.e. to name the pet when talking to someone else, not to talk to the pet. For instance "I forgot to feed Lassie" might later become "I forgot to feed the dog", then "I forgot to feed the damn thing" or whatever. Am I the only one to understand "refer" like this? Zetfr 16:53, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

In my household at least, we use the animal's species as its name. For example, instead of "Have you fed Lassie?", we may say " Have you fed Dog?". I think is what Randall is implying. 141.101.98.29 17:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Since he begins to refer to the animal in the animals language, I would say that only makes sense if he talks to the animal. However the way the caption is phrased it could be understood the way he talks about the animal. So I think it is impossible to say that one explanation is correct and the other is wrong. Maybe that should be mentioned in explain. --Kynde (talk) 18:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. 188.114.97.151 23:24, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I got a completely different idea to this, the relationship is one of friendship, not parentage, so the moving from name to associated to other words to sounds would be more like Hey Lassie -> Hey Dog -> Hey Fatso -> Ugh, Oi. This shows more the common friendship trope of insulting one another in a humorous way, which seems far more likely than transitioning into some kind of hybrid language for all bar the most "maternal" of owners. Hackerjack (talk) 22:40, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree here. With our cat it was Hi Blaser -> Hi Cat -> You little **** -> Oi, you -> "Maw?" Drmouse (talk) 09:08, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

The "You little ****" is something I can definitely attest to. A friend of mine keeps calling his cats assholes and similar words, so often that I have a hard time remembering their actual names. "come here" isn't how one "refers to" a pet, it's how one might call a pet, which isn't what the comic is about at all... Maplestrip (talk) 09:15, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

I call my dog "plague" (makes more sense in our dialect of Portuguese). 188.114.97.151 23:24, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't say Randall is restricting this comic to either of the two major possibilities: speaking to the pet, or speaking about the pet. It could well be a mixture of both. We have a cat whose name is "Pwca" (Welsh spelling, same as "Pooka" as in the Jimmy Stewart movie "Harvey") but the name varies between "Pwca" and "Picklebean" and just "Bean" right along with "silly kitty" and "funny girl" and other descriptive words. She has a typical little short chirp that she uses to get our attention or to complain about something, and we often chirp back to her, so that would be "the pet's own language." My daughter's cat "Minnie" is "Minners" or "Minimum" or "Min-Min" or again, descriptive terms. You could certainly argue that some of those words are borderline incoherent. In most cases, they can be used while speaking either /to/ the pet, or /of/ the pet to a third party (or sometimes to the universe at large.) Note that the phrase "pet name" has a double meaning, with 'pet' either a noun or an adjective, and in the latter case usually not actually referring to a pet.Taibhse (talk) 00:43, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Randall talks to cats: 231 108.162.219.83 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I thought it is Vienn diagram not Euler diagram 108.162.254.47 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I call my kitty "foofy butt," "foofbutt," "fluffbutt," "plushbutt," "puffbutt," "squishy," [gibberish cooing], "meow meow," "hairy baby" (BH6 is my favorite animated movie), identical meows to his, and sometimes, occasionally, his actual name Mitu. Or Mittu My mom spells it differently than me. For the longest time, autocorrect autocorrected his name to MIT. xD Now all I can picture is me stroking the dome of one of the best schools in the entire world like it's a kitty. KITTY.

I miss him. He has lung cancer, and is at home, and I'm away at college. My poor little foofehbutt :c International Space Station (talk) 05:20, 7 October 2015 (UTC)