The naming of cats is a particular thing. Sometimes a good name comes to you immediately; it suits the cat perfectly, like a well-fitting glove. Sometimes it comes a little later when the cat has revealed some of his or her personality to you. And sometimes cats (somehow) communicate their name to you.

So today, here are five Visiting Cats and the stories of how they got their names.

Kiwi (also featured on the header photo) was a black cat, or so she thought. But actually she had two little white patches, one under her chin, and the other a bikini patch. She was named after a famous boot polish because a couple of dabs of black polish would have been all it would have taken for her to be completely black. Obviously we never dared tell her that she wasn’t completely black – that would have been most unwise.

Sabiħa was brought to the garden by Dinky. She probably came from a local garden where she was also fed (and well fed, at that), and Dinky thought she was bewitchingly beautiful. He followed her round like a lovelorn teenager, so we named her Sabiħa, which means beautiful.

The first sighting of Ghost Cat was just after Visitor Cat had been chased into a dense clump of bamboo by a pack of dogs. Sadly we never saw Visitor again, but only minutes later, a cat emerged from the same area resembling Visitor in build and with the trademark big, fluffy tail, but with much more muted colours. She walked slowly across the fields back towards Visitor Cat’s home garden and she resembled her so much that we named her Ghost Cat.

It won’t be hard to guess how Sniffly Cat got her name – no big explanation needed, except to say that, right from day one, she was a sniffly cat, and a lovely sniffly cat at that.

Izit was a mature male cat who arrived during the pandemic. He was self-assured, big and strong and ‘informed’ us on day 1 as he climbed down the olive tree into the garden to demolish a bowl of food that his name was ‘Izambard the Italian’, also known as Izit. And who were we mere humans to argue with that?

Five more cats and their names will follow tomorrow – watch this space!