The Name

In 2006, my future wife and I watched an absurd show on the Discovery Channel about two tigers. 

It was called Living With Tigers, though I’d be lying if I said I remembered that. I don’t. I just googled “Julie tiger show” now, and I found it. 


This happened a year or two after college, and we were probably drunk at the time. 


The documentary starred two Bengals named Ron and Julie. They had been raised in captivity, and their owners were trying to teach them how to hunt,* with the goal of eventually release into the African wilds. 


I suppose in the wild, tigers are trained by their mothers on how to hunt and do other tiger things. Ron and Julie had no tiger parents to teach them how to be tigers. I guess this training helps, because Ron and Julie sucked at being tigers. 


Julie** and Ron took halfhearted charges toward indifferent prey animals. There was something hilarious about a Bengal tiger hunting apathetic deer with no fear at all for these feckless tigers. 


Something about this was hilarious to us in our drunken, mid-20s state. Bengal tigers named Ron and Julie. They sounded like an old married couple. We knew of plenty of animals with human names, like a Max or an Annie or a Charlie, but never names like this. 

We agreed that if we ever got cats, we would name them Ron and Julie. 


A year or two later, we got Julie, and there was never any real debate what she would be named. 


It didn’t hurt that she looks like a Julie. Something about the name, just the way it sounds, conveys her personality. Two syllables, the first with the “ooo” sound. Just hearing in the name in my head makes me smile. 


Julie.


Jooooo-lie. 


Julie.


*Apparently, the documentary was controversial. People think the hunting scenes were staged. Who knew? 


**Here is a tribute to Julie the Tigress, who died in 2003. 

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