We’ve had multiple cats in the family over the years. The inside kitties in my lifetime: Diana was named by my father, after the Superhero Alter Ego of his childhood family cat. Smoke, Diana’s daughter, was a gray cat and my parents thought “Smokey” was too obvious. Fiat was a little void with a BIG purr that reminded Dad of a sports car engine; little void grew to a respectably sized void. Dot is twofold; she was a gray cat with a white dot of a locket, and wandered into our yard on my grandmother Dorothy’s birthday. Chessie looked like the Chesapeake railroad mascot and was named to attempt to convince my railfan father to let us keep the kitten (it worked). Dozer was found at a Phil Dirt and the Dozers concert. Tigger came with his name, he was an orange tiger adopted from a classmate and said classmate’s younger sister had named him. We kept the name. Dell was a tuxie, and Dad understood when I said “black and white cat” to mean “cow cat,” so he suggested the name of the cow patterned computer company; it stuck. Tabby was a tabby cat who we didn’t expect to stick around for as long as she did, so we didn’t put much effort into naming her. Wilbur, son of Tabby, was the first of the kittens to take the food bait when we were trapping kittens so we named him after a pig. Sparky, daughter of Tabby, was the runt of the litter and we gave her a strong, energetic name as encouragement. The outside/feral kitties: Barney lived in our old garage/toolshed, so we called him The Barn Cat, which morphed into Barney. Our neighbor who had him on timeshare called him Blackie. Pebbles and Bamm Bamm, sons of Tabby (and suspected children of Barney, along with Wilbur and Sparky), were named to match with Barney. Bamm Bamm was eventually grabbed and taken to a cat rescue, Pebbles fought like heck the one time we got him to the vet and firmly resisted all attempts to socialize beyond yelling at us from a safe distance. (cont)
Same thing happened to me. I was born with very dark hair, which turned blonde, which slowly darkened to brown. Still isn’t as dark as it was in my newborn pictures.
We had a feral, Barney, living in our yard who we were feeding. He knew we were to Food Providers and had the Bring Food NOW stare down cold, but we couldn’t get too close. We trapped him to get him fixed and at least one round of shots. He was Very Annoyed for a few days after we got him home, and glared at us from the safety of the garage when we put his food out. Then he apparently decided that as long as we continued feeding him and didn’t make a habit of grabbing him and carting him off to the vet we could be forgiven.
His girlfriend Tabby was friendlier and would talk to us and let us get close. We were able to cart her to to the vet several times over the years she was outside, partly because of the three outdoor cats hanging around she was the one we could catch and if one had the sniffles, the others probably did, too. She forgave at about the same speed as our inside cats dd, and over the years she started accepting pets and discovered the joys of parking on laps when someone sat on the porch to pay attention to her. Tabby was eventually convinced to move inside for her health. She declined the invitation for while, but when we forced the issue demanded to know why we hadn’t told her it was so darn nice inside before.
Mom named Daisy because she thought she looked like her name was Daisy. Shorter term outdoor cats were Spot, Little Guy, Little Lady, Chip, and Edsel.
The only name backstory I know for extended family cats is my grandmother’s cat Sam. Everyone thought he looked like a son of Morris.