A year ago today, this kitten was admitted to Los Angeles Animal Services. They issued a bar code, marked him “SUSTAINABLE” and processed him into the system. They called him Wonton and his sister Dumpling. He got sick, respiratory, didn’t put on weight as he should. His chances weren’t good for a while. The Los Angeles shelter system is overcrowded, overworked. Survival only of the fittest. “SUSTAINABLE” rapidly fades into “MEDICAL COND” into “RED LIST” into “EUTHANIZE”.
Your last cat sends you your next one and maybe that was happening here. On June 7, 2022, I didn’t even know I needed a next. IYKYK. Little Wonton knew. He clung on for more than a month until I showed up at the shelter, the day his sister was adopted and he was alone for the first time in his short underweight life. Dear reader, I sobbed like an orphan the moment I held him because I knew too.
But Wonton? What kind of a name is that? Shelters and rescues have to work extra hard to sell black cats to prospective adopters. He’s cute, bite-sized, you can spear him out of the basket with your chopstick, and nomnom him in a single swallow. Pork or vegetable—it’s up to you! Everyone loves wontons!
Wonton, though. No. It’s… No.
The naming of cats, as T.S. Eliot established in 1939, is a difficult matter. Your cat is all your lares et penates smushed into a single furball. You must consider carefully: What will your invocation be? You need something formal, grandiose even, to convey the esteem in which you hold them, your protector, your guide. A name worthy of gods or kings. Then you also need the single syllable to whisper in your half-sleep, when they burrow beneath your bedsheets, softness to soft belly, snuggled in the space between your limbs where no human could ever fit. And then there’s the double barrel middle, the extra enunciation to emphasize the trouble they’re in. Wonton is not that. Not any of that.
I renamed him Oedipus, the king. Eddy/Eds for short, Eddy-Freddy for long. A year on, it’s working really well for both of us.
Watch: GREY GARDENS (1975)
Grey Gardens hits differently when you’ve been there. Not to the crumbling East Hampton mansion, but to that mother-daughter space occupied by the middle-aged and the old. So many of my friends are going through it too now, the inverted motherhood, taking care of another human being who smiles and snarls and spits and kisses and needs you and resents you and rips you to shreds and tells you it’s her version of loving you. It’s a ride.
Or an interpretative dance.
Half a century has passed since Little Edie waved her flag in the Grey Gardens hall. The Beales and the Mayles brothers are long gone. The house still stands, but its decaying contents were dispersed in an estate sale in 2017. Nonetheless, it was a delight to revisit Big Edie and Little Edie at the sumptuous Academy Museum theatre last week, with an introduction from filmmaker Muffie Meyer.
Meyer said they filmed at Grey Gardens for around six weeks, then spent years going through the footage trying to construct a narrative. The problem was that the Beales “didn’t change”. They orbited around one another, their life centered on those side-by-side twin beds, their banter and recriminations the same on Day 1 as on Day 42. So the documentary edit is built around the idea that the audience would change instead. The narrative follows our journey towards understanding them, as we evolve from bemused pity to respect. Judging by the affectionate laughter of the Academy audience, most of whom were on a repeat viewing, that journey gets swifter and more enjoyable every time you take it.
The Beales filled their home with cats—for emotional support, warmth, amusement and protection (from raccoons!). They named them after relatives and exes, as this clip (from the 2018 IFC documentary based on pre-GREY GARDENS footage, THAT SUMMER) shows.
Bigelow and Ted Kennedy seem like solid names for cats. What do you call yours?
We have Neville Graybottom, who now is known as Bubs, or King Fluffybutt. We have Zelda who moved to my mom's. She is sometimes referred to with a sound "Gaweeee," but mostly Zelda. I named her after F. Scott's wife since I suspect she was the genius, but my kid thought we were naming her for the video game. My widowed Mom is delighted to have her sitting on her at night like a chicken. And, finally, we have Scout, also known to the MIL as "Baby". Jem, her brother died when they were kittens and she never recovered. She is bowlegged and according to my husband, the reason I got a dog.
My cat is Bill, we adopted him from a friend and he's oldish so we kept his name. Apparently named after Bill Murray