How Hotch Became Beezle

It’s been a long, long time since I did any Friday catblogging, but I just found some old video I took of the Ragdoll kitten we got in the summer of 2011, and that gave me the impetus to finally put something together.

[Update: This post is now linked at the Carnival of the Cats at The Opinionated Pussycat.]

We like to name our cats after characters from movies and television, and we decided to name this one “Hotch” after the character of Aaron Hotchner on Criminal Minds. “Hotch” sounds sturdy and reliable, and Ragdolls are big, sturdy cats, so it kind of made sense.

The problem is that you really have to get to know a cat a bit before you can learn his true name. Our new Ragdoll kitten turned out to be bundle of energy. Lots of energy. Scary amounts of energy. The video in this clip was from maybe an hour of total playtime.

Yes, he was like that all the time. Hour after hour, week after week. He was constantly running around, climbing pieces of furniture, jumping to other pieces of furniture, knocking off small objects and chasing them around the floor and eventually bringing them into the bathtub, where he could bat them around and around. Anything we touched, he would race over to explore and attack. He knocked over stacks of books, plates of food, small electronic gadgets, rolls of toilet paper, cups full of coins, stacks of boxes, lamps, external hard drives, speakers, and at least three 7-Eleven Double Gulps full of Diet Coke.

He was always trying to play-fight with the other cats (Ripley declined, but Buffy would take him on) and even with us. One night when my wife was trying to fall asleep, he scared the crap out of her by trying to play-fight with her face.

Most cats are pretty sensitive to your reactions. If they hop up on the table, all it takes is a gentle push in the right direction to encourage them to jump back down. The kitten wasn’t having any of that. If he jumped on the table to sniff at our food and we picked him up and set him on the floor, he would just jump right back up and try again. And again. And again.

These were not the actions of a reliable and sturdy “Hotch.” This was something else, and it was time to find a new name.

After some thought, we decided name him Beezle, after the character played by Patrick Bergin in 1991’s Highway to Hell, an amazing B-grade comedy/horror mashup that is probably best known for casting Gilbert Gottfried as Adolf Hitler. The story (spoiler alert) is about a young couple who stumble upon a literal highway to hell, where they meet a bunch of strange people, including a mysterious figure named Beezle. At first, Beezle appears to be friendly and helpful, but it is eventually revealed that that “Beezle” is short for Beelzebub.

Because this kitten has the devil in him.