Smilax

[rsc]

Yesterday afternoon, jwg and I were discussing cat names, I think because we had been talking about comic-strip cats and neither of us could remember the name of the cat in Rose Is Rose -- when he asked me if the Latin name for catbriar (with which we have rather more experience than we would like) would be a suitable cat name, but I didn't know it off the top of my head, so I couldn't tell him.

Today I remembered to look in my wildflower guide, and discovered that the genus of greenbriers (as the book spells it) is Smilax, and that the Common greenbrier or Catbrier is Smilax rotundifolia.

I think Smilax would be an excellent name for a cat. (John suggested that it would be especially good for a Cheshire cat, which might be a painting the lily just a bit.)

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[rsc.livejournal.com]

astrophic

This reminds me of a story, which is kind of tangential, but it's my journal so I can do whatever I want.

I was a counselor at a summer camp in 1966. The camp always put on a stage show during the course of the summer, and the counselor in charge of the drama program (it had been the same guy for several years) liked to designate an "award" (whose name was derived from something in the play) for the individual who most impeded the progress of the show at any given rehearsal. The previous year, when the show was Henry IV, Part 1 the prize was called the "Bull's Pizzle", after one of Falstaff's more vivid epithets for Prince Hal. The year I was there, the play was a stage adaptation of Melville's Billy Budd, in which a character suffering from illness is described, on separate occasions, as being "sick as a puking cat" and "sick as a pink-ass baby in a cradle". This inspired the counselor to come up with two named awards, first prize going to the "Puking Cat", with the "Pink-ass Baby" as runner-up.

This counselor was also fond of egregious puns, so it is perhaps not surprising that a group of campers, at some point, awarded him the "Cat-Ass Trophy".