Info:
The third chapter of "Rebirth," in which Kitten gets an official name.
DISCLAIMER: AKIRA and all of its characters are created by Katsuhiro Otomo; I'm just borrowing them for fun.
Words: 1,343
Chapter 3
A Good Cat Needs a Good Name
Okay, the bath was done and over with. He could check that one off his list (which was completely imaginary - he was flying by the seat of his pants, here). What next...?
Ah, right, the little kitten (now officially his kitten; the thought was… strange. There hadn’t been anything that he had truly let himself think of as wholly and truly his in a long time. The underlying expectation of responsibility was daunting, yet exciting) still didn’t have a name yet. She’d need one if she was going to stay with him permanently.
He supposed that he could just keep calling her ‘cat’ if he really wanted to, but the idea of that felt... weird. He was already so attached to her, against his better judgement. Sure, he had always been impulsive and emotionally driven, but this felt different. What he was feeling at that moment wasn’t anything like what had driven him for the past few years, and even that had been distant, like he hadn’t really been allowing himself to feel it all, to dwell on anything for too long.
Now the dam that he had built up so long ago had collapsed, and he no longer knew how to deal with the crashing waves. This, this feeling was something he didn’t know how to deal with, either, but somehow it felt... softer. This wasn’t something suffocating, it wasn’t something he could drown in. It was overwhelming in its own way, yet it felt... safe, in a way. A non-physical kind of safe that almost made him forget about his lack of physical safety and stability.
...He was thinking nonsense again. In any case, letting her remain nameless seemed... much too distant, too detached. It felt somewhat demeaning, even; a complete disservice to everything she already meant to him. Yeah, she needed a good, solid name.
But what would be a good name for a cat?
Well, he could just go with something common, whatever first came to mind. Maybe Mei or something? ...No, that didn’t sound quite right. There was also... uh...
He had nothing. This was already harder than he had thought it would be. In some way, he had expected to look at her and just kind of… know what he wanted to name her. Like something in his head would just instantly click, and he'd think yes, yes! That's the one!.
But, he supposed, that kind of easy (and kind of cheesy) resolution only really happened in movies. Well, whatever, how hard could it even be to just come up with a few names and pick the best out of them?
Apparently, very, very hard. At least if your name is Kaneda Shotaro.
What would be a fitting name for the luckiest black cat he had ever met?
(It’s worth noting that Kaneda hadn’t actually met very many cats at all, nor black ones in particular - at least that he paid any attention to - so he wasn’t exactly sure if that description actually said all that much about her. He had an inkling that it probably said more about his utter lack of experience with domesticated animals in an environment they were actually supposed to be in.)
...
...Coming up with names was a lot harder than he had initially thought. Somehow, he was coming up totally blank. He knew a lot of names, sure. But for some reason, he couldn’t think of any off the top of his head. Aoi, Hana, uh… Kana? Well, that last one was pretty, but it didn’t really seem right. Maybe nothing would, at least right away. Maybe he just had to pick something and go with it, eventually it would just become her name anyway and his initial feelings wouldn't really matter anymore.
He looked down at the cat, with her wide, wide eyes and soft, dark fur. Almost like a tiny storm cloud. There were probably thousands of names one could give a cat like her. She had so many distinct features, so many points that any one name that came to mind just couldn’t do justice to all at once. More than that, though, she was his now. She deserved something chosen with real thought and feeling, chosen with care, even if she would never understand the significance.
Maybe he should ask someone? No, that’d just be embarrassing. What would he even say? “Hey, so I just impulsively adopted a cat like three hours ago, and I’m just now realizing that I suck at naming things, could you be a pal and help me out?”
Not only that, but again, he felt that he owed it to the thing to at least give her a name he had come up with himself. If he couldn’t even do that, how could he be sure that he could be an adequate pet owner, either?
…Maybe he should name her after someone?
He pondered this new idea as he gently stroked his thumb across the soft fur on her face. Who would he want to name a cat after?
A list of names instantly came to mind. There weren’t too many, but no one name instantly stood out to him.
That may or may not have had something to do with the fact that most of those names belonged to guys. He supposed, though, it didn't really matter - she was a cat, she certainly couldn't tell the difference. And, if he was really so hung up about it, he could always just take a part of one of their names and turn it into a more feminine one. Like, uh… Kaiko?
…That sounded dumb. That was fine, though, he didn’t really want to name her after Kaisuke (he mentally apologized to him; not that he would ever know, let alone have the opportunity to get offended, but still. Sorry, Kai).
On that note, he was unsure of who he did want to name her after. He could just go back to randomly listing off names as they came to him, but this was the most solid idea he had had so far. He really didn’t want to give up on it so easily, even if it did turn out to just be a waste of time and energy. Plus, he figured he might as well see it through and see where it took him. There was no real harm in it, even if it didn’t go anywhere.
Yeah, this was… going absolutely nowhere.
After spending (arguably) too much time narrowing down his small list of names, he had finally come to the conclusion that not a single one of them would fit.
...He really didn’t want to go back to randomly thinking of and rejecting names like some kind of weird guessing game that seemingly didn’t have any right answer.
But, well, he supposed he did know one other that might work. One that he had kind of had in the back of his mind for a bit, but... it had felt weird, somehow.
He wouldn’t say he was really self-conscious about it, but he figured it was probably kind of weird to name your pet (it was still weird to think that he had a pet) after yourself (though, he had never exactly been what one would consider normal in most instances anyway). One might even say it was egotistical (which he actually most likely was, he would admit it).
That wasn’t why he was considering it, though. To him, it was as though making himself her namesake would truly drive home the connection between them. And maybe it was a bit silly to feel so “connected” to a cat, but it was important to him.
And maybe she was just some stray that he had found while walking alone one night, maybe she would never quite understand her own significance to him, maybe it was silly to think of such a thing as significant so soon after it had happened; hell, maybe it didn’t even matter that much what he named her, maybe he’d eventually get used to any name. But, again, it was important to him, and, well, wasn’t that in itself enough to say it mattered?
In any case, it was a nice name. He just liked it, really, that was all. Yeah, yeah, that was the one. Screw it, he’d allow himself to be corny and overly sentimental, just this once.
“Welcome home, Shoko.”