Toby is so funny. Every time we sit down to have a meal, he jumps on the table and tries to sneak a bite of our food. He usually gets really flat and close to the table, stretches and reaches out one paw to touch our plate, and if we are not looking, he’ll try to snatch up the food. I think he thinks that if he is as flat as possible, we can’t see him or something.
This morning, he again made that attempt several times. Each time, we said, “Toby, no!” Daniel even sprayed him with the water spray thing. As I was cleaning up, Toby tried again on Daniel’s plate. To my surprise, Daniel yells out really loud…
“HONEY!!!”
We looked at each other and burst out laughing hahahhahaa.
I was trying to look up to see whether there was a more official name for that phenomenon, other than just “name substitution.” Couldn’t really find any – I think it is so interesting though! Actually, I heard that when we do that, it’s because in our minds, we have placed them into the same category or we have logged it in our minds into a similar situation or something….
Some examples:
- One of my friends, when he was getting annoyed at his roommate (who is a guy), also called him “Honey.”
- One of the partners at my old firm confused me with the name “Laura”, which sounds absolutely nothing similar to my name, not to mention we have never worked together on a project. The only thing we have in common is that we are both Asian women.
- My mom always runs through every child’s name before she gets to the right one, usually in order!
- Often, when I am exasperated or pretend-annoyed, I will call Daniel “Sarah.”
- I once called Sonia “Honey!”
- Sarah has called Derrick “Heidi” or “Christina” before!
- Daniel’s mom called Timmy “Brownie” before (which is their dog’s name).
- And once, perhaps the most grievous of all, Daniel called me “Mom”!!! Yea, he heard it from me after that.
Hahahaa too funny. Daniel’s tone of voice today was the same one he uses when I do something silly like grab things out of the oven without the gloves on. Innn-teressss-ting….
In the spirit of this post, here are some funny pictures of Toby misbehaving.
He really likes drinking water out of other people’s cups. He also likes to drink the water out of our vases. It is the same water!!! Silly cat.
Standing in front of the TV, in the guys’ way while they were playing PS3…
He sometimes sleeps in funny positions…
And here is just a cute one of his Puss-in-Boots eyes 
Toby is the sweetest cat ever!
