Name Nora’s Cat! A Contest

Happy New Year! As promised, it’s time for this blog’s first (and perhaps only) cat-naming contest!

Onslow, clearly thinking very hard about this contest

Here’s the background: one of my heroines in my novel in progress, Nora, is known to have had a cat. We don’t know anything else about the cat, including its name. So I thought for a little fun, I would let my readers have a contest to name the cat. The rules are simple: leave your cat name in a comment or if you prefer, e-mail me privately at mail at susanhigginbotham dot com. You have until January 15 to enter, after which an impartial panel, consisting of my husband and my daughter, will choose the name from an anonymous list I submit to them. The winner gets a mention in the acknowledgments of my novel (working title, The Assassin’s Kiss), a signed copy of the novel, and, of course, his  or her choice of name being used in the novel itself. (As I’m still in the early stages of writing, the winner’s gratification will be delayed, but I hope it’ll be worth it.)

A few guidelines:

The cat can be either female or male, depending on the name.
No description of the cat’s appearance exists, so this too can be tailored to the name.
My heroine is a 19-year-old Irish-American Catholic, well educated at Catholic girls’ schools and gently reared.
My heroine is fond of novels, especially those of Charlotte Brontë.
The cat will make its appearance sometime in 1864.
The novel is set in Washington, D.C.
Most of my heroine’s friends and acquaintances sympathize with the South, but it would be inconvenient for the plot for Nora to have a cat with a blatantly pro-Confederate name (e.g., “Stonewall.”)

That’s it!  Rest assured that Onslow and Stripes, as well as our dogs, will be cheering you on from the futon.

Stripes, devotedly holding down a box top.

Update: In order to give everyone a fair shake, I will not publish comments until after the contest is over. If the winning name is a duplicate (that is, suggested by several entrants), all will get acknowledgments and books.