Or the Definitive Mostly True History of the Yonkers Cats' Names
My grandmother was known as the “Crazy Cat Lady of Yonkers”. She fed a lot of stray cats that came to her back door until she died in August 2004. There were always plates of cat food on her back stoop. The cats usually came around at night. She worried about those outside cats. If she went away for the weekend, she found someone to feed them. She also fed cats that lived in places where she often went. There were some stray cats living in the parking lot of the hospital where she volunteered. She fed these cats and worried about them. In fact, this is an excerpt from her eulogy, written by my cousin Thalia:
She also fed countless stray cats over the years (adopting as many as her house could hold and providing a backyard buffet for the others.) One of my lasting memories of her is from a Christmas morning when she was in her eighties (and still driving.) There was an enormous blizzard and some people were not sure about driving to our family Christmas gathering. For Grandma, there was no question about that. She would go to church and she would be with family; it could not be Christmas without either one. But first there was one more vitally important thing to do; so she drove through the swirling snow to the hospital parking lot to be sure that the stray cats there would have their Christmas breakfast!
But my grandfather was in charge of naming the cats. The cats that were lucky enough to become their housecats were christened with unusual names. The first cat belonged to my Aunt Gina while she was growing up. She was a big tabby and lived a long time, I think almost 16 years. So after my Aunt married and moved out, she was still there when I was a kid. We thought she was mean, but she just was not used to having a bunch of children underfoot. Her name was
YATTA. We all pronounced it as “Yadda” because New Yorkers are not ones to pronounce a double letter “T” when it is in the middle of a word. For example “spaghetti” is “spagheddi”, no? My grandfather told me that Yatta was Italian for cat. When I was in High School and taking Italian class, I learned that actually GATTO means cat, not Yatta! Eventually I was able to clear this up in my own brain so therefore I shall explain how this came to be:
The Italian word for Cat is “Gatto” (with a soft G as in Gate). Sicilian dialect or regional pronunciation would pronounce an initial “G” as our “Y” sound in English. In Italian the final vowel is an “O” or an “A” depending on its gender. Yatta was a female so the “O” from Gatto had to become an “A”.
Etymology of Yatta: From the Italian of Dante to American-Italian:Gatto->Yatto->Yatta->Yadda
The next cat taken in was found in the basement of my grandfather’s office. This poor thing had been abused: her hair had been shaved and teenagers tortured her. My grandmother heard her cries. My grandmother brought her home and nursed her back to health. She was a gray and white cat. That cat was named
Yattarina. “Ina” on the end of a noun or adjective in Italian is a diminutive, which and gives the word the connotation of “Little” or “sweet”. I am sure some of you have heard the word “Panino” which means small sandwich. That is the diminuative of the word “Pane” bread, so it means “Small Bread”. Therefore Yattarina meant Little Yatta or Little Cat. After Yattarina died, one day another cat followed my grandmother home! Cats just knew to follow her home; she was like that. She had a certain gentle way with all creatures, especially children and animals, and the animals were drawn to her. That cat was named
Yatterina the Second.
Eventually one of the cats that was being fed on the back porch would never leave. He just kept hanging around in the yard, looking pitiful. They decided to give him a permanent home. My grandfather promptly named this cat “
Yardello” meaning “The Yard”. Actually this is a great example of a made up fun word, because the word Yardello is not really an Italian word. My grandfather would say “We found him in the Yard” and then say “here comes Yardello, better known as (pause): “The Yard”. That cracked me up then and cracks me up now!
Then there was another cat added to the family. This one was all black and she was named
Carbonia, which is a derivation essentially meaning, “coal” or “blacky”. I think my grandfather had a soft spot for this one, because he gave her a middle name. It was
Cipoduccia pronounced “Sheepadutza”. He told me this meant “Little onion” and that
Carbonia Cipoduccia meant “Little Black Onion”. After I got my degree in Italian I was able to figure out how he arrived at Cipoduccia. Any Italian scholars out there, correct me if I am wrong. This is mere speculation:
Cipolla is onion. Cipoda or something similar must be Sicilian for onion. “Uccio” is another suffix, (the same as “ina” described above) to indicate smallness or to express affection or endearment. So really Cipoduccia is Sicilian for “cute little onion”.
Etymology of Carbonia SheepoduchaCarbonia= Little Black Coal
Cipolla->Cipoda-> Cipoda + Uccia ->Cipoduccia
According to my cousin, there was another cat named
Carbonia the Second, who was also black. My cousin named him in honor of the first Carbonia, who was a very sweet thing. However, reusing names doesn’t mean the creativity was drying up. On the contrary!
The next cat to join the clan was the unfortunately named
Crucificia. This word means crucifix in Italian. Why did he name this cat Crucifix? After all, she didn’t have any crucifix-like traits. He told me that in Italy, Crucificia, although it means Crucifix, is also a woman’s name. He had an Aunt Crucificia who was very ugly. So hideously ugly that she scared him. The cat was also quite brutally ugly, and therefore this ugly cat reminded him of his ugly Aunt Crucificia! He would say, “here comes Crucificia, who reminds me of my ugly old Aunt Crucificia in Sicily”!
As you can imagine, taking the cats to the vet was a challenge. My grandmother used to have a tough time answering the question “What is your cat’s name?”
At some point there were several litters of kittens. From one of these litters, a few cats were adopted. My grandfather, Master Cat Namer Extraordinaire, was still at it. One cat was solid black so she became “
Blacktonia”, another made up Italian-English word. The other cat was orange, so he named her “
Rustoleum”, you know, Rusty for short! There is a product called
Rustoleum that you can find in Home Depot for rust removal. There they were, Blacktonia and Rustoleum, or Blacky and Rusty living the high life in their home. There was a third one in the same litter that died as a kitten that Grandpa called "
Cuto McGlintock" because he was cute. I do believe my grandfather got a kick out of language. He got a kick out of this product called Rustoleum. He enjoyed unusual words and liked making up his own words and rhymes, which will be the subject of a future blog entry.
There was another cat hanging around that my grandmother always called “the strange one”. In Italian the word for “Strange” also has the connotation of “foreign” or not known more than odd. I think when she was calling this cat “The Strange One”, she meant it more that they didn’t know it. My grandfather then started calling him “
Strunyatta”, literately “Strange Cat”. Or here comes The Strunyatta, better known as "The Strange One". I am not sure if they ever let that one in.
Family historians, please email me if you can correct or update any of the above information. I am sure some of this is incorrect, except I think I have the names right, as I have told this story countless times, to amuse folks at parties. However, the dates, the sexes of the cats, the circumstances surrounding their adoption may be off. The only thing I am 100% certain of is that Yardello, better known as “The Yard” was found in the yard.
