CLEVELAND, Ohio – It was a gargantuan task to wade through 3,500 photos of cats submitted by loving owners who wanted to showcase their feline friends, but we did it — and had a great time doing so.
Lots of ooohs and awwws echoed through cleveland.com’s “Best of” team as reporters looked at pictures sent in for the Cutest Cat in Greater Cleveland contest, as well as lots of “Oh, look at this one!” as we found new, and cute, favorites.
It will be difficult to determine the 100 finalists that will be up for votes by the public in an online poll next month.
We were also surprised to see some interesting numbers surface.
Here is a quick overview of Greater Cleveland’s Cutest Cat contest by the numbers:
- 3,500-plus cat photos were submitted.
- The photos will be published in 37 galleries (alphabetically by cat’s first name) over 37 days. The first gallery was published Monday, Feb. 6 and last gallery will publish on Tuesday, March 14.
- The most popular female name was “Lucy” – 30 of our feline friends bear that name, followed by Bella (26) Lola (23) and a tie between Baby and Callie (18 each).
- The leader in male names was “Oliver.” Twenty-nine male submissions carry that that name. Another nine have the variation of “Ollie.” The next most popular boy names were Milo (25) and Charlie (22).
- We had 26 cats submitted wearing the moniker of “Kitty,” “KitKat” (2), “Kitten” (4) or, just plain “Cat” (4). Many of those owners were brave enough to admit they weren’t creative or just too lazy to come up with a better name for their cat.
- Nearly 100 cats had names that included Mister, Mr., Miss or Ms.
- Our Cleveland sports stars are well represented. Eight were named Frankie for Indians short stop Francisco Lindor. Also, one each were named after LeBron James, Matthew Dellavedova, Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel, Manny Ramirez and the mystical Jobu from “Major League.” In each case, the owner said they named their cat during or after the teams’ amazing 2016 seasons.
- For “Star Wars” fans, we have four Lukes and four Leias — which makes sense since they were twins — one Darth Vader, three Vaders, four Chewies, two Kylos and one Rey.
- Literary fans can rejoice with Harper Lee and Scout (“To Kill a Mockingbird”), eight cats named Gatsby (“The Great Gatsby”) and from the “Harry Potter” novels, the characters of Luna (16), Bellatrix LaStrange, Hufflepuff, Padfoot and Mooney, as well as Prim and Finnick from “The Hunger Games.”
- There are 12 Indianas and four Indys – named for Indiana Jones, as well as multiple animals named after characters from “The Lion King” and “The Junglebook.”
- Musicians were also given the nod with several Hendrix, a Toby Keith and one Kitty Gaga.
- One “Bug” was submitted.
- And, possibly, the most creative name: “LOLly,” whose owner said she earned her name by her penchant for “always making humans laugh.
Here’s links to all the other cat photo galleries that have been published:
Aaloo through Azusa: See contest photos of cats named Aaloo-Asusa
Photo gallery #1
BaBa through Bellah: See contest photos of cats named BaBa-Bellah
Photo gallery #2
Bellatrix through Boo: See contest photos of cats named Bellatrix-Boo
Photo gallery #3
Remember – you can see all of the cute cats submitted in galleries published daily at cleveland.com/best.
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