A Pennsylvania woman has revealed how her son’s choice of name for their new cat led one neighbor to issue an ultimatum.
Roxann Setzer, who lives with her husband Mike and son Ricky in Coraopolis, told Newsweek the neighbor demanded that she change the cat’s name “immediately” or “animal control would be called.”
It’s just the latest twist in a story that began when Setzer and her family became aware that a number of young stray cats had been frequenting their porch.
“They were extremely feral,” Setzer said. “We tried to catch them but had no luck so we started trying to befriend them instead by leaving food out.”
In time, the cats began to reciprocate, leaving “presents” like half a bird, or an entire dead squirrel on the porch. Eventually, the Setzers decided to give the two most frequent feline visitors names.
The names we give our pets can be important, particularly in the case of cats. In 2019, a study published in the journal Scientific Reports asserted that cats were able to recognize their own names. Researchers recruited 78 cats to take part in the study. Each cat heard four different words spoken via a recording of a scientist’s voice or the owner and then their own name.
Researchers were looking for any sign of recognition, be it an ear movement, a head turn, or a flick of the tail. In the experiment, feline interest seemed to taper off as the list of words was spoken aloud. However, they perked up as soon as the animal heard their first name, suggesting some form of familial recognition.
If the Setzers gave these two strays names, they might find a way to coax them inside. They began brainstorming names. “We needed to call them something so the long haired gray one became Gacy,” Setzer said. “The striped one my son Rick wanted to name Dave the Magical Cheese Wizard, after the meme of shelter cats and their names, so it became Dave and Gacy.”
Over the weeks that followed, Dave and Gacy continued to visit. But then something unexpected happened. “We noticed Dave was gaining quite a belly,” Setzer said. Then, on Friday, June 13, Ricky found a decidedly friendlier Dave outside looking “much skinnier.” It turned out Dave was not only a girl, she had given birth.
Dave’s outward attitude was decidedly different in the wake of her becoming a mom. “We were able to pet Dave now, but not pick her up,” Setzer said.
So a plan was hatched to find Dave’s kitten and, along with their mom, move them all inside. “It took a couple of days, but Dave brought her babies onto our porch and we were able to bring them inside,” Setzer said. “There were six beautiful little fuzzballs we called the Beans.”
Reddit/u/Mediocre_Lobster_961
Setzer has made an appointment to get Dave fixed, while her pre-existing cats, a pair of 10-year-old littermates, had to make some pretty major adjustments. “Xerxes and Eugenie weren’t thrilled about Dave and her kittens at first, but they all get along now,” Setzer said.
If only the same could be said for their neighbors. In a post shared to Reddit under the handle u/Mediocre_Lobster_961, Setzer revealed that an elderly next-door neighbor had “screamed” at her and was having a “tantrum” over the decision to call the cat Dave as “she’s a girl.” “She told me she’s calling animal control about it,” Setzer said.
“It was told, not asked, that I must change her name immediately or animal control would be called,” Setzer said. She couldn’t help but laugh at this demand. Setzer wasn’t alone in seeing the funny side. At the time of writing, her Reddit post has over 33,000 upvotes, with many users sharing similar stories and pictures of their own cats in the comments.
“Hi, Dave! I’m Billy. I was a feral who was named Billy before they figured out I was a girl. Congrats on your kittens,” one wrote. Another said: “This is Athena. Not a stray but rescued from a hoarder situation. She originally had the name Bob and while she no longer holds that name, she sends her support to Dave.”
Setzer isn’t taking her neighbor’s threat too seriously, though. Instead, she’s choosing to revel in her son’s choice of cat name. “Now, even though she’s an inside cat who will live with us forever, we now yell ‘come here, Davy girl’ at the top of our lungs outside every day,” she said.