Dead Souls

The protagonist of Nikolai Gogol’s apparently incomplete novel Dead Souls is named Chichikov.  This, like many other characters’ names in the book, is a bit of a joke, a play on words I would never have understood without footnotes, and comes from the word that means a “sneeze” or “to sneeze” or something else sneeze-related.

My boyfriend and I once dreamed of owning a big orange tomcat.  The original name put forward was Eugene.  I selflessly donated the name to a friend’s  big orange tomcat and was, in the end, left cat nameless and alone.

But it’s alright, because Chichikov is an EVEN MORE PERFECT name for an orange cat.

Any good pet owner can tell you that naming a house cat is integral both to the accurate representation of that cat’s personality as well as to the development of the animal’s persona in and of itself.  This might be a chicken/egg situation.

I really want to be a good pet owner; about 45% of my brain is devoted to the storage and consideration of Good Names for Cats.

(From http://thecatorialist.blogspot.com)

 This cat is a CHICHIKOV (the theoretical cat formerly known as Eugene).

The “real” Chichikov (real as imagined by Gogol, at least) was a man remarkable in his lack of remarkable traits, a man so desirous of improving his social status that he doggedly pursued a hairbrained scheme: to buy up the papers to the recently deceased serfs of country landowners in order to appear as if he had hundreds of underlings.  These “dead souls” would have to be those who had been counted on the last census, making them officially “alive” yet practically useless.

See, the big orange tomcat pictured here is just like that.  This picture was probably taken while he was in the process of dragging a bunch of roadkill into a pile so he could lord over the pile of dead things like a master hunter and play the hero.  Maybe it’s unfair to assume things like that about someone, but look at him.  It’s just so obvious.

Don’t even get me started on those little girls he dates.