<p>So my daughter lives in an off campus apartment and late yesterday there ended up being an impromptu get together in the open garden(ish) area between the 2 buildings. She has a much loved pet that she has been training to the leash in the apartment and decided to take her out for a trial run to see how she would do outside. Someone asked her the pet’s name and when she told them responded "that’s a nice name for a Chihuahua ".</p>
<p>Her pet is a CAT. :D</p>
<p>Love it! But now I have to ask - what’s its name?</p>
<p>Thanks, made me smile.
What kind of cat?
Big ears, or just a case of seeing what one expects to see on the end of a leash?</p>
<p>She is a moggie - just a kitten - about 5 months old maybe. Her nickname - which was my daughter’s response to the question - is Gir - from the character Gir in Invader Zim (which you may or may not know). My kids both loved Invader Zim. Her actual name - wait for it - is Biddy Giraffe. Biddy because my daughter spent the summer working in Tennessee and they use Biddy (or sounds like biddy) for small. Giraffe because she is the color of a giraffe and she has markings over her eyes that look like a Giraffe’s horns (or whatever those things on top of a Giraffe’s head are). So far they always call her Kitten. (By the way where I come from a biddy is a little old woman.)</p>
<p>She does have big ears. And it is unusual to see a cat on a leash. We used to RV a lot and a couple of times we met people traveling with cats who had managed to leash train them. I always thought it was a good idea especially if you were going to have to travel with your kitty. I was not successful when I tried - not enough patience. - but she seems to be succeeding. Wearing the harness = treats.</p>
<p>If it was Tennessee, they were probably saying “bitty”, as in “She’s just a little bitty thing” 
Very Southern expression!</p>
<p>I thought the same and said that to her- but it sounded to her like biddy so that’s is what she used. Where we live Ts often sound seem to be pronounced like Ds (to my English ear anyway). My pet peeves - wadder and paddern. I commented in another thread that I can bring myself to say tomayto (gets funny looks when I go home to England) but i just cannot say wadder or paddern. And people often do not understand what I am asking for when I ask for ‘water’ in a restaurant so I just look at my husband and he says ‘wadder’ for me. </p>
<p>As an aside apparently when I say Pawn it sounds like Porn but I can’t seem to get it correct which causes great hilarity to my kids.</p>
<p>I tried to leash train the one cat we got as a kitten (as opposed to adopting as an abandoned adult cat). Her response when she got to the end on the leash was to lay down, curl up and nap. No treats or games could entice her to get back up. I gave up. Never try to outlast a sleeping cat!</p>
<p>We had one cat we tried to put a leash on, and she just laid down like she was depressed. Never tried again again. Our great big boy cat will go on a leash, but never walk on one. He will sit outside with it if we insist.</p>
<p>Several friends tried to leash train their kittens. In the end, the kittens trained their owners to leave them alone. Swimcatsmom, are your sure your D’s kitten is not a dog? 
Just kidding! And I love the name!
And there are sites and sites of advice on how to train kitties:</p>
<p>[How</a> to Leash Train a Cat](<a href=“http://www.wikihow.com/Leash-Train-a-Cat]How”>How to Leash Train a Cat: 9 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow)</p>
<p>“bitty biddy” = a tiny old gossipy woman</p>
<p>I know this isn’t a political thread, but my sister, who is very close to her two dogs and very involved in talking about politics, said her dogs are voting for Bark Obama and Joe Bite’em. Sorry, I know, groan.</p>
<p>I have never heard of a moggie…but I have had people think my cats are either wild animals or a fox.</p>
<p>If you live in the south (and were born and raised here), bitty is pronunced biddy and definitely means something teenytiny (which is the same as iddy biddy,lol)</p>
<p>moggie = non pedigree cat.</p>
<p>swimcatsmom - I went to school in Georgia and it seemed like nobody ever understood when I said water either! I used to say it a couple of times and then after the puzzled look on the waiters face all my friends would say WADDER! I used to love going to the mexican restaurant because i could just say agua!</p>
<p>yes swimcat, from Ohio, but when wife and I visited Oxford, she ordered water with her meal(it may have sounded like waddah). Server didn’t know what she was asking for. Having an English friend, I repeated it to the server as ‘wotuh’ and she knew just what I meant.</p>
<p>Do you know what is one more than 4 to a Southerner? Fav.
Bostonians sometimes forget the letter r in words like park and car.
New Yorkers sometimes add an r where there isn’t one, like in idea
Wasn’t it GB Shaw that said England and U.S. were 2 countries separated by a common language?</p>
<p>I’ve seen a couple of cars over here in Seattle with bumper stickers saying “Bumpah stickah for my cah from Maine” Or something like that.</p>
<p>All of my cats (only 4 in my 50+ years) have been leash-trained. Growing up, we lived on a very busy street and my father’s gas station was right next door and cars were always in and out. My first cat, who I had from ages 5-22, loved to be outside but we were afraid for her safety. Plus, she was all-white and almost deaf, so that was another reason for her to be on a leash. She would sit outside on the front porch, lie in the sun, and watch the world go by. So after that, to me it made sense to train the other 3 cats to put on a harness and then go outside. Our next two lived 14-15 years (mostly together), but one, a pure bred Persian we inherited from a deceased relative was declawed when we got him, so it was vital for him to be out on a leash. His “sister” cat was a kitten when he came to live with us (also pure white, but had excellent hearing), so she just got used to the harness as well. Now we have Samantha, our “pound kitty”, who is 11 going on 2 - she has been on the harness/leash since we got her and also loves to go out on the side deck and squirrel hunt. We have a big, wooded lot next door, and in her younger days, would sometimes escape from the harness and we would spend hours in the woods searching for her. Now, she is pretty content and hasn’t slipped out of the harness in a few years (maybe it is that she has put on a few pounds) but still loves to be outside on a nice day. We go for occasional walks, but mostly she stays hooked up to a 30-ft. puppy lead which gives her a chance to go from the side yard to the front yard. I always make a practice of checking up on her every 10-15 minutes or so, as there are lots of neighborhood cats who seem to like to visit our yard. She does not take kindly to these visits, and has been in some minor altercations with the intruder - LOL! She chases them out of the yard, and only stops when she runs out of leash.</p>
<p>Cat in a hat??? This offbeat news knocked my socks off! The cat in the picture looks like my childhood feline companion:</p>
<p>[Tama</a> is the purr-fect antidote to financial gloom: study - Yahoo! News](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081005/od_afp/japananimalcatoffbeat]Tama”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081005/od_afp/japananimalcatoffbeat)</p>
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