Editing 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. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.134|108.162.254.134]] 08:06, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
:My cat is also named "Cat".  Then again, I call all cats "Cat". [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.138|108.162.210.138]] 19:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
:My cat is also named Cat. We recently adopted a kitten and named her, what else, Kit. [[User:Tsuchinoko|tsuchinoko real]] ([[User talk:Tsuchinoko|talk]]) 14:53, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Not sure this is relevant enough to include, but there's [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ADogNamedDog a trope about that] [[Special:Contributions/188.114.111.224|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. [[User:Drmouse|Drmouse]] ([[User talk:Drmouse|talk]]) 14:24, 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. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.29|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. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

:::Agreed. [[Special:Contributions/188.114.97.151|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. [[User:Hackerjack|Hackerjack]] ([[User talk: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?" [[User:Drmouse|Drmouse]] ([[User talk: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... [[User:Maplestrip|Maplestrip]] ([[User talk:Maplestrip|talk]]) 09:15, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

:I call my dog "plague" (makes more sense in our dialect of Portuguese). [[Special:Contributions/188.114.97.151|188.114.97.151]] 23:24, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
:: Was it a black dog, by any chance?  [[User:Brenda|Brenda]] ([[User talk:Brenda|talk]]) 11:36, 20 April 2019 (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.[[User:Taibhse|Taibhse]] ([[User talk:Taibhse|talk]]) 00:43, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Randall talks to cats: [http://xkcd.com/231/ 231] {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.83}}

I thought it is Vienn diagram not Euler diagram {{unsigned ip|108.162.254.47}}

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
[[User:International Space Station|International Space Station]] ([[User talk:International Space Station|talk]]) 05:20, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

If you just listened to what my mother called her cats throughout the day you'd think their names were "Trouble" "You Ratbag" and "Get down off that!" -Pennpenn [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.162|108.162.250.162]] 01:22, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

By the time my parents' dog died her name had expanded from 'Lucy' to 'Lucius Germanicus P. Codwagon the Great' and my dad would talk about how she got lost up in the frozen spruce country and saw the Wendigo. To be fair she was like 14 by that point, so it's possible that we had reached past talking to her in her language to achieve complete screaming psychosis. She seemed to enjoy being told spooky stories about herself, though, so that was okay. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.59.142|162.158.59.142]] 04:44, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but I interpreted it as referring to the gradual transition where the pets name is gradually morphed into something else and/or it's given a nickname, which also eventually morphs. I once had a cat named "Smoky", which became "Swiss Mocha", and eventually "Bin-Bin" (I forget how exactly". My dog "Rasta" eventually became "Googer" or "Biggur" (I think that was "Good girl" and "Big girl" originally; "Biggoogurl" was also used sometimes). "Pupplet" and "Dogalog" also saw use. Her actual name is reserved for when she is bad or I'm trying to get her attention when she's running around outside. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.22|172.68.54.22]] 06:52, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
:We have a dog named Gypsy, and that somehow became "Dipper". [[User:PoolloverNathan|PoolloverNathan]] ([[User talk:PoolloverNathan|talk]]) 17:13, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

i call my dog a dingus, which turns into a dongus or donkus or doinkus. also for cats, good kitty --> gooky [[Special:Contributions/172.69.71.143|172.69.71.143]] 14:28, 28 September 2021 (UTC)Bumpf

there are no cats. there are just small fluffies. {{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 16:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

after 13 years, i have arrived at the point where i call my cat "splunkus", "deplorable gollompus" or just "plump beast" [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.102|108.162.221.102]] 12:42, 6 November 2023 (UTC)