drwex | Extracted from a comment elsewhere

I don't own a cat now. I'm allergic and always have been. Once upon a time my then-wife convinced me that we ought to get a cat. A friend of hers was trying to place a litter from a pregnant stray cat he'd taken in. He came into the house with the last two kittens, one of which was the tiny runt of the litter. He put her down and she immediately ran and hid under the couch.

While under there she made piteous "MEEP!" noises until her sister came back into sight. Her sister was a normal kitty, exploring everywhere but every time she got out of sight of the little runt we'd hear "Meep! MEEP!" in a more and more frantic tone until the explorer would come trotting back to the little one.

Since the two of them were clearly inseparable it became imperative that we take both. So we ended up with two kittens. My then-wife decided to take the normal one and left me the little runty thing. Within a week of having them in the house I came down with allergy-induced asthmatic bronchitis. I got better, but apparently the fact that a human was also making piteous noises made my cat so curious that she came out from under the couch and sat with me.

I called her "Meep" because even out from under the couch she made that sort of noise for most of her kitten-hood. I forget what my then-wife called hers as a kitten. When they became adult cats, they got new - more appropriate - names.

My wife's cat was "Sushi," which was short for "My cat has sushi for brains" (because there was already a cat in the social circle named "Dorkbutt").

And I called mine "Cat" as her public name. Her actual name was "FUGGYOU", said very fast. She only responded to that name when I called her that, though, and she gave me the hairy eyeball for using it. When other people tried to use the name she just pretended she didn't hear them.

There are lots of Sushi-cat stories; ask me some time and I'll tell them. Also, I'm feeling like I might want to tell The Roach story, but it's long.