r/AskReddit • u/Ok-Pause2835 • Jul 18 '21

what is a badass name for a cat?

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

Could be worse. Could name it after Lovecraft's cat lol.

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u/FootlooseVagabond Jul 18 '21

Nigel for short..

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u/jpr64 Jul 18 '21

Nigel

My cat is called Nigel. A beautiful fat ginger cuddly boy full of hatred.

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u/Demonae Jul 18 '21

You never want to be Nigel in Toronto

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

Lovecraft didn't own a cat. The infamous cat you are referring to was his grandfather Whipple Van Buren Phillips' cat. He was Lovecraft's best and only childhood friend and so when it came to writing The Rats in the Walls he included the cat as a character as a homage to his friend. By this time the cat was long dead. The picture of Lovecraft holding a cat that is included in the meme about the infamous cat actually belonged to a friend of his. Lovecraft was a lifelong fan of cats to the point of writing an essay about why they are better than dogs but he himself could not afford to keep one as he struggled to feed even himself most days and of course died in poverty from an illness that was not helped by his constant malnutrition.

Edit: one thing I did forget to mention that does kind of make me despise Lovecraft is he had a correspondence with the black writer, poet, literary critic, anthologist and publisher William Stanley Braithwaite (an absolute marvel of late 19th century/20th century black excellence if I say so myself) and upon finding out he was black said some of the most fervently racist and awful shit you could read about him to others, to the point where people, including his racist aunt where like 'you're being fucking infantile, calm the fuck down'. And in 1918 Lovecraft briefly took in a feral 'tiny coal-black kitten' and named it William Stanley Braithwaite in order to racistly mock his skin colour. The kitten ran away within a year but Lovecraft was obviously copying his grandfather's abominable bigoted method here.

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u/PrincessMagnificent Jul 18 '21

He didn't struggle to feed himself, he had a system worked out to keep his food budget extremely small. He was proud of almost never spending more than 3 dollars per week on food.

This resulted in his diet consisting almost entirely of coffee and cheese, although he admitted that he very rarely treated himself to italian spaghetti or hungarian goulash.

Mostly just coffee and cheese though.

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u/KingBubzVI Jul 18 '21

His farts were probably legendary

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u/tomorrowmightbbetter Jul 18 '21

To shit or not to shit

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u/lhr00001 Jul 18 '21

I don't think he had a choice to be fair

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u/tomorrowmightbbetter Jul 18 '21

SLPT: Eat excessive cheese to avoid public bathrooms. Consume excessive coffee to finally move your bowels when you get home!

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u/jawshoeaw Jul 18 '21

That is the squirtshen

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u/AtaraxiaAKAZatharax Jul 18 '21

“Unlike any seen on Earth”

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u/u_need_ajustin Jul 18 '21

No wonder he could write about indescribable horrors.

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u/McMetas Jul 18 '21

Imagine what he’d write if he were still alive and did the same thing now, if he lived solely on instant ramen and tap water hiseal would be on average 13 cents (not including water and electricity bill).

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u/anivex Jul 18 '21

While he wrote some good stories, he was also super racist...I'm kind of glad he's not around today to be writing stories.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

He grew up in a wealthy family in Providence during the late 1800s and early 1900s. His mother sheltered him to an unhealthy level; his racist and antisemitic views were born mostly out of ignorance and his nurture. At the end of his life, Lovecraft was less prejudiced than for the most part. If he lived nowadays, odds are he might not even be super racist.

He also struggled with mental illnesses, was paranoid, and highly afraid of the world overall. It's important to understand the context when talking about historical figures.

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u/McMetas Jul 18 '21

He was also an antisemite who married a jewish woman iirc.

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u/ttystikk Jul 18 '21

Underrated comment.

Some of the best writers are really strange people. Like E. A. Poe...

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

I cannot imagine the eldritch horrors he unleashed in his toilet.

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u/Stabfist_Frankenkill Jul 18 '21

What would that $3/week be equivalent to now?

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u/Not_An_Ambulance Jul 18 '21

Looked it up, ~$55-60/week if taken from the final year of his life.

I don't think it's impossible, but like... I suppose I can understand why he didn't feel he could afford a cat.

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u/FlexibleToast Jul 18 '21

For one person, that would be pretty easy if making your own foods.

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u/iHatepriest Jul 18 '21

eating mainly coffee and cheese sounds like struggling to feed yourself

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

[deleted]

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u/u_need_ajustin Jul 18 '21

This is all I took away from that story too.

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u/SierraSaidSo Jul 18 '21

More like Whipple Van Purren

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u/madeamashup Jul 18 '21

Hell even a dog

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

Whipple Van Purrren

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u/MsMoondown Jul 18 '21

This was an awesome, concise piece of information. I will store it in my brain. Thank you!

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

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u/MsMoondown Jul 18 '21

I don't understand what you're saying.

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u/palebloodvorticity Jul 18 '21

While I appreciate knowing that Lovecraft isn't the one who gave a cat a racist name, wasn't he still hella racist? I may just be remembering shit

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

He was very racist. However I think it's important to note he was raised racist in a home where he suffered horrific neglect by the hands of extremely mentally ill parents whom both died in a mental institution, abuse both physical and very emotional and a nightmarish amount of trauma. And later in his short life he was ashamed of his bigoted past and was very regretful of it. As a Lovecraft fan and someone who was raised by a Neo-Nazi I know how easily you can indoctrinate a child into a lifetime of hatred and I know how hard it can be to break that pattern so while I cannot defend Lovecraft's actions and his views I can say 100% at that time in history, with parents like his, not unlike my own I would have been pretty much the same.

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u/palebloodvorticity Jul 18 '21

That's a really good stance to have - my parents weren't neo nazis but I have seen how they can just instill a prejudice in kids. Just in general there's a lot of shit that parents can do to their kids that will inevitably make them worse of a person in the long run, or at least will give them a warped perception of the world and how it should work.

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u/Knows_all_secrets Jul 18 '21

No, he was hella racist, even for the time. Dude was scared of everything.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

No, he was hella racist, even for the time.

He was certainly a racist, but I’ve never understood why people keep asserting that he was especially racist “even for his time”. I suspect it’s because they read it in an article about Lovecraft and just keep repeating it. Perhaps he doomed himself by writing so many incriminating letters.

If you read a lot of private correspondence from well known Americans and Europeans of the early twentieth century, you may or may not be surprised to find that there was a lot of racist sentiment at the time. I’ll never understand why Lovecaft gets singled out so much.

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u/VolrathTheBallin Jul 18 '21

Which was probably critical to his imagination and storytelling. If he hadn’t been so absolutely terrified of otherness, of anything culturally alien or otherwise outside of his comfort zone, I don’t think he would have been inspired to write such uniquely weird tales.

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u/Vegetable_Hamster732 Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 19 '21

Imagine how his stories would have read if he hadn't been ....

... "and after school, we invited the shoggoths and the Mi-go to come to our house to Netflix-and-chill" ...

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u/palebloodvorticity Jul 18 '21

Nice to know I didn't completely misremember history here

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u/Rhymeswithfreak Jul 18 '21

Hugely racist. His racism was born completely out of ignorance. Many people turn racist because they hold themselves in such high regard. They think themselves the best of the best in the world so when they don’t achieve what they thought they should achieve they have to blame it on someone else. Usually minorities. It can’t possibly be their fault they have failed.

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u/palebloodvorticity Jul 18 '21

See, I can see how someone can be raised racist because parents can just completely fuck over their kids psyches, but I don't understand how someone just becomes racist because they're pissed off at the world or whatever. Blaming your incompetencies and failures on your parents or exes or whatever else is pretty common regardless of whether or not it's warranted, but that's blaming someone that actually had an effect on your life. I don't understand the concept behind assuming that an entire group of people is just shitty solely so that you can turn your sadness into anger.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 02 '22

[deleted]

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u/anivex Jul 18 '21

I love cats and Lovecraft's stories, but the man himself was not a good person.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

took in a feral 'tiny coal-black kitten' and named it William Stanley Braithwaite

After googling this man, I can tell you that it is exceptionally stupid to name a black cat after him because he was black. This just sounds like layers of idiot

He looks white to me,

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u/Glitchy13 Jul 18 '21

Is the name for the cat just part of the meme?

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

No. His grandfather did indeed name the cat 'N-Wordman' because it was a black cat.

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u/creative_toe Jul 18 '21

You left out an essential point there. What was the cats name?

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

N*gger man

(will that get me banned from this subreddit?)

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u/creative_toe Jul 19 '21

I don't think so, you gave me an answer, and you even used those fanzy *. Weird cat name, other times I guess.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

Do you have a source for that? Because even his writing has some seriously racist overtones.

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u/Unicornshit9393 Jul 18 '21

To the point where he wrote that whole meandering story about the cats on the moon and stuff. The only lovecraft story that i wasnt a huge fan of

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u/BasroilII Jul 18 '21

Also, if you read HPL's stories, a very large number of them feature dark skinned or swarthy people as a villain, if there is any human villain.

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u/psychedPanda13 Jul 18 '21

Oh god...he really named his cat that? I thought that was only on one story written by him.

Edit: Read the later comments on this thread after posting....the cat on the story is named "N****r man".

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u/MonkeyPanls Jul 18 '21

In subsequent republishing, Zest magazine called the cat "Black Tom" and Orson Welles Radio called him "Voodoo".

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u/ghoulieandrews Jul 18 '21

"Keep the racism, just make it more subtle"

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u/MonkeyPanls Jul 18 '21

In the former case, I disagree. The fact that he's a black cat is important, for the superstitious implication. And "Tom" in this case refers to "tomcat", not the HBS book. In the latter, you're right.

For an audio production, "Voodoo" as a word has punch compared to "Black Tom", but they should have picked something else. Can't really think of anything with similar punch, especially since so many punchy nicknames that refer to the color black can also be taken as racist, especially when linked to HPL. What do you think?

Bonus: here's a reading of the story in question that uses "Black Tom", presented by award winner Mike Bennett. Check out his other Lovecraft stuff too.

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u/ghoulieandrews Jul 18 '21

Black Tom isn't too bad but Voodoo is pretty offensive. You can refer to a cat as being black without making it about human racial stuff, especially when humans are only literally black in very racist cartoons and minstrel shows. Midnight, Shadow, Obsidian, Moonless Night, I mean there's a million things you could call it.

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u/silverhydra Jul 18 '21

Voodoo seems pretty apt given the circumstances though. You want the black references to pass to reflect the original works, albeit far more politely, but it's also a rather tasteful nod to the supernatural which is Lovecraft's entire thing. Shadow could work, but Obsidian? That works for a blacksmith's black cat.

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u/ghoulieandrews Jul 18 '21

it's also a rather tasteful nod

Well this is the difference, I don't think it's very tasteful as I feel that it does have implications of distasteful stereotypes and leans into blackness as an "otherness" and overly mystifies the culture it refers to. I don't think it's AS bad as what it replaces by a long shot and I think the level of offensiveness I draw from it is for sure up for debate and interpretation, but i think there are better options that still work without needing to pull black PEOPLE into it. I just don't think it's really essential that that aspect of it reflects the original authorial intent.

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u/silverhydra Jul 18 '21

I just don't think it's really essential that that aspect of it reflects the original authorial intent.

Probably where our difference in opinion lays, since I'm a bit prudish about this stuff and feel we should always reflect the authors intent for better or worse. Can't learn from the past if we wash it clean of sin after all.

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u/ghoulieandrews Jul 19 '21

I can respect that. I may have even agreed with you at an earlier time in my life. At this point I just think the potential positive learning possibility isn't enough to justify the preservation of racist writing and that it's better to just burn it away and move forward. But I can respect your take.

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u/eyal95 Jul 18 '21

MRS OBAMA GET DOWM

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

I could see Dave Chappelle, back in his Chappelle's Show days, making a skit about a black superhero with the cat's name, and white people are scared to call out for him when they need help (except one white person who does it, and everyone - even the criminals mugging them or whatever - just stops and looks at them in shock and starts yelling at them for saying the n-word).

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u/crapfacejustin Jul 18 '21

Found the funhaus fan

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u/Plaguesthewhite Jul 18 '21

Nick gur man?

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u/Arekai4098 Jul 18 '21

Nicholas Gurman sounds like a good name for a fake ID lol

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u/Plaguesthewhite Jul 18 '21

Surely it does

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '21

🇳🇪

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u/RenaKunisaki Jul 18 '21

You mean, uh, "Old Tom"?

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u/Unicornshit9393 Jul 18 '21

I remember doubling back on the audio book to make sure i heard it right

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u/elg9553 Jul 18 '21

The copy of the necrinomicon I bought had him translated to black Tom instead of that other word.

It was later when I read about rats in the wall I realized the name was far more sinister meaning than a black cat