Pet names, like a favorite song or an inside joke, are deeply personal things. They transcend the severe monotony of everyday life. Those names, at times, are liniments to pains. They are an access hatch that, without them, we would otherwise be denied a mystical access to the being behind the pet name. Where do they come from? How do they work? And might not they be the origin of all the stories that reference magic phrases and turns words?
When Riley, my second child, was born, I proceeded through a series of adorable noises when referencing her. These sounds weren’t only an affectionate ploy, but a way to say anything to see that gummy smile. I started with ‘baby.’ Over the course of weeks, the word devolved into the more gushy and drawn-out ‘bubby.’ Sometimes with two trailing b’s, sometimes with ten, and a devolution into stomach raspberries that would have her screaming in joy. That name didn’t last long. It wasn’t quite magic. Shortly, that grinning baby’s name was Buggy. A decade and a half later, she’s still Buggy. This certainly isn’t the most original origin story. But for pet names, I think these are the places where that particular brand of magic starts.
If we don’t have a pet name for our loved ones, that doesn’t mean we don’t care, or that there is any less potential for magic. It only means that a specific exploit that cuts through space and time never came to exist. My grandmother had a private name for me as a baby that I’d never known. She revealed it to me shortly before she died. That name, now secret forever between us, is a keyhole looking upon a bridge. One that is not possessed by a troll holding the passage for ransom. Instead, it is an invisible way known by few. And maybe the pet name from my grandmother was the foundational potential invested within me. I, too, was given knowledge of the ways. Not where they lay, but how to find them.
Pappap was and always will be pappap. Not grandpa. Not pappy. Pappap. Everyone called him that. He outlived Grandma by a stretch and died during COVID, so we never got to have a funeral. Grandma loved horses, and at the peak, had thirty of them. But, try as I might, I can’t imagine Pappap in the barn or out in any of the pastures, though he must have been at some point. As much as Grandma loved her farm animals, Papap loved his house pets. The property ran along a 50-mile-per-hour road, and Pappap kept the small but ever-growing pet cemetery south of the house, used exclusively for house pets.
Grandma always had her dogs. Pappap preferred cats, though sometimes it seemed begrudingly so. In the span of years after grandma passed away, she was followed by the dog she left behind. Kali was a blue heeler and as stoic as dogs come. She never, not for a moment, recovered from the loss of her best friend. She would allow you to pet her, but she didn’t revel in the attention. This is uncommon for a dog. It was hard to see her sad, and there was no emergency access hatch between us. Kali was her name-as-a-pet, and if grandma had given her a pet name besides that, I never knew it.
Cats are notoriously reluctant to heel, and over time, Pappap had developed pet names for his. Being forced into medical retirement from the Navy due to a seizure disorder, and increasingly unable to leave the house, over the years, he became less and less ambulatory. He wound up as a dependable fixture in his recliner in the second-floor living room. I remember he would call cloyingly to the current cat. Smokey was the worst. I don’t know that he ever cared for Pappap.
Pappap would ask whoever happened to walk through the door to check around the house for Smokey, because he couldn’t navigate the many stairs and the maze of rooms. Recall, by this point, he’d buried many pets, family, and a wife, so he was a bit nervous at times. I would find Smokey sleeping on the top of the bench freezer in the garage, or on the back of the love seat in the basement, or in any other place outside of Pappap’s view. He’d accept this report and return to watching reruns of M*A*S*H, Quantum Leap, or The A-Team.
Pappap’s final cat was Jack. He was a good deal more amiable than Smokey and appeared to come by his affection for my grandfather honestly. I had fewer occasions to seek Jack because he spent less time hiding. I had always called him Jack, but I’d also heard him called by another name on a few occasions. I got to use this moniker a few months after Pappap died.
Kali had been sullen and inconsolable. We were both devastated. I was sad because she was a good dog, and she was suffering. We both loved my grandma, but I’m a human, and she was a dog. United in our grief as we were, that was all we really had in common. There was no shortcut between us. No common parlance. Sad Kali. Sad me. We both sulked. We took a nap together one day. I outlived her.
After Pappap died, I was pursuing my grief and saying my goodbyes through a wandering ritual. No one was home, and I started in the living room, looking over the small shrine he’d made to my grandma. At the center was a black-and-white photo of a young woman in Navy whites who had plenty of life ahead of her. The memorial’s quaintness was sweet. Personal memorials can stray into the grotesque. That wasn’t the case here. What Pappap had arranged was enough.
Jack was on the chair in Pappap’s room. I recognized the lethargy, but he was a bright, spirited little guy and acquiesced to some pets. I’d thought to leave then, get back to my things, and let Jack get back to his. Surely, whatever relief I was going to feel would come along in time. I looked over Pappap’s knick-knacks and what we had left of him. I looked at Jack, and Jack looked back as interestedly as he could, given that he was a cat. I pet him again. An urge came over me. What if I said his name? That special name I’d heard only a few times. But it was already coming out of my mouth, pushed up and out by blooming sadness.
“Jackie-Jack,” I said, looking down. I only said it once.
Not before and not since have I seen an animal behave the way he did. My eyes welled with tears, and there was a look on his face, a wholly uncatlike contenance I can hardly describe. If you know cats, it’s in the ears, the whiskers, and the set of their shoulders. Jack gently but quickly reached up with his forepaws, latched on, and climbed up my chest. It was a desperate movement, but it wasn’t the frantic scurry of a scaredy cat. I put my arms around him, and he—you don’t have to believe this, but it’s true and gets to the heart of the matter—wrapped his forepaws around my neck, tightly. That cat hugged me, and I hugged him back. He didn’t hang. He held.
Hugging is distinct, particularly when it is intentional and affectionate. Cats are not renowned for their affection, particularly human affection. They might lick you, drool, and knead biscuits in your lap, or lie on you because they want your warmth. What did I take this as in that moment? It was a very real recognition of this particular animal’s depth of emotion and its sympathetic need to console and be consoled. If I’m projecting—and I don’t think I am—I believe it was one last hug from Pappap. Trap door open. I hugged Pappap through Jackie-Jack, and Jackie-Jack hugged Pappap through me.
I think that was what we needed to start moving on. I went my way. Jack went his way. I outlived Jack, too. Did that magic die? That bond we shared? No. I still feel it in me. It isn’t a sadness that will make you weep. It’s an unmet longing, tapped directly to the heart.
Miracles happen all the time. It is not my intention to disparage Carl Sagan, for I am also a skeptic, but might not the scientific method be the exact metric we need to use in order to validate miracles? Not by the recreation of events. No. Instead, we find the event utterly irrepeatable. That once in an infinity, disproven by science and substantiated only by intuition, occurrence. A miracle brought forth by the sweetness of intention. Pet names, as a wormhole, connect loving hearts.
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