Not so long back a chance conversation on Facebook led to Peter Finnemore of Grooving In Green revealing that he had a pet cat called 'Trev', named after Trevor Brooking the football player, we then found out that Simon Manning, also of Grooving In Green, had a cat called Gromit.

That then led the Dominion people to madly message people in their friends list to find out what is owned by whom and the names. With a few exceptions we chose relatively sane names for our pets.

Dominion Team:
Lenore had a ginger and white cat called Murphy - not named after Peter but after the beer, she did also once have a hamster who was called Miss Kitty after Selina Kyles cat in Batman. If you know Lenore you'll understand the 'Murphy' thing.

Sean Palfrey 'says' he has a miniature schnauzer named Wolfgang Amadeus Von Panzerschnauz aand wants a cat purely to call it Moggiarty Van Mausen.

Miranda Yardley, Editor of the printed mag, has a tortoise called Hermann and a fluffy cat called Lily, whilst my moglets are Persephone (aka the furry keyboard cover), Zoe and Holly.

Baz, he of Band Of The Week and Dead Heaven says that the family cat is called Princess Isabella the 3rd of Denmark, thankfully it's shortened to Izzy or Whizz - you can imagine what the neighbours would think calling out the cat's full name to get it to come home for din dins! The Dedhevan family also had a kitten called Ziggy Sputnik but still has a gerbil called Frankie Red Eyes, the last gerbil before Ziggy was called Spaz. Baz said "Spaz has a grave marker in the garden, much tittering from the visitors is heard when visiting my Spaz's grave." Also in the Dedhevan household are fish called Shadrak and Gumbo, alongside Sid and Nancy, sadly Vic and Bob passed away. More fish were brought into the family recently - Skye and Carat.

Of the cat owners, Tom Ashton's (March Violets) cats are Blackie and Smokie, named by his children but had a cat from Shepherd's Bush called Duvel. Out of the other Violets who own cats, Si Denbigh's cat is called Stripe but apparently Si calls the cat whatever he wants as Stripe is deaf, whilst Jo Violet has four felines: Olive and Tigerlily who are the two older ladies and two new kittens called Hugo and Harvey. We'll come to Rosie Garland later....

Mr and Mrs Fiend of Alien Sex Fiend say "We used to have a pet black cat named Luney back in the 80's, but then we started going away a lot on tour, etc so we had to organise cat sitters. In the end we felt it was unfair on her.  A close friend of ours adopted her and Luney is immortalised on the covers of the " RIP" and "Lips Can't Go" singles, because she used to sit up with me while I did the cover artworks through the night. Luney loved our music n'all, her ears used to twitch like mad... she was, well, special, she was a total one off!" The idea of a pet cat being immortalised on single and album artwork is a sweet and loving touch, and Nik Fiend is not alone in this as you will read later on.

Chris Tuke of Berlin Black and Luxury Stranger has no pets but lives in front of a pond, one of the ducks is called Bob, whilst Simon York better hide as he said "Yes - I have Lisa Sorry... no, I don't have one although I do have a habit of having small cats follow me home... I named the last one Jasper - she's a lovely little thing...the sort of cat you can rough around and she doesn't start scratching. I saw a woman 'talking' to Jasper the other day, I got a bit jealous..."

Peter Steer of Tenek has Charlie the cat who really doesn't like Peter's music, Candia McKormack of Inkubus Sukkubus has a three legged cat called Sid (Vicious), Gina Stone has Jesse, TyLean's cat is called Monkey and it has extra toes - like thumbs, Rosetta Garri of The Spiritual Bat had a cat, now dead, called Ubbi, Lucas Swann of Uninvited Guest had/has a cat called Jazz, Rich Mills of Global Citizen has a cat called Dracul De Ville, Alexa de Strange's Siamese cat is called Rockstar,  Layla Rayna of Strap On Halo has cats called Elvira Von Bat and Sasha Von Bat, and Alixandria Corvyn of Last July has a tabby cat named Ziggy, short for Sigurd Sputnik Stardust.

Jack Hell of AlterRed said "I have a black and white cat called Fred, well, we call him Startled Fred as he always has that rabbit-in-the-headlights look on his face. He also thinks he's a dog. He'll sit when you tell him to and comes running over all enthusiastically when you call him as if you were going to take him for a walk. He's also a fetish cat as he loves being squashed." Hmnn.

Meleficent Martini has three cats: Adolf, Morticia and Wednesday, the Rhombus/Grassby family have have four cats: Sid, Verity, Alaric and Lucretia. Teresa from Zeitgeist Zero has two cats, one Siamese Cross called Cream and one Black British Short Hair called Coffee -plus a gold fish called Bob who swims around a collection of skulls in his fish tank.

Stephen Carey of The Eden House and Adoration also has two cats - Bert and Ernie Stanton, they're mentioned in the production credits on the album 'Smoke and Mirrors'. Wild Bill Buttock knows Ernie fairly well as he pissed in Bill's bag once. Finally, Del from History Of Guns has some naming to do as his cat has just had kittens - plenty of suggestions here.

There were bound to be some dog owners and they popped up and had used a similar pet-naming system as the cat owners: that of 'what first popped into the mind when nearly sober' by the looks of it. According to our Numan fan (check out Baz's fanatical footwear), Gary Numan had a dog called Spooky, Raymond John Ross of Ankst has a dog known as Sprocket, thus named when Ray had a bike, Andrew Birch of The Last Cry has two dogs called Bob and Ted, Gary Clarke of The Hiram Key has Cheeseburger, and Simon Hinkler had a black labrador called Max. Jay Aston of Gene Loves Jezebel once had a dog known as Taffy, being a bit of a wanderer Jay hasn't replaced the sadly departed dog.

Charles Edward of Seraphim Shock said "Well, No, she's not mine but I do have a little pup that I'm kind of the Godfather to. She's in my pics. I watch after her from time to time. Her name is Lulu Vanderscruff."

In the category of 'Others', Rusty Egan said "If I had a pet I would call it Rusty, I like that name.... I also like girls to stroke me." Kenneth Spiers of Spizz Energi said "Got one goldfish! Morpheus from The Matrix", whilst Louis DeWray of Nosferatu has a pet beetle called 'Bug'. Yeah, right.

Azia of Les Modules Etranges doesn't have a pet as such but owns something that keeps she and Jenn Module happy within their marriage called 'Pink'. Far too much information.

Some of those asked didn't own a pet and neither did they want to for various reasons. Michael D. Herbage of Department S has no pets as he prefers his animals on a plate, Eddie Roxy, also of Department S says "Rock Stars don't have pets, everyone knows that", Vendemmian Dave said "no - unless you count Banana Cat" and Bruno Duarte of Immundus said "no pets - no time for such monkey business".

To end on a more sensitive note we'll give Rosie Lugosi/Garland of The March Violets the last word. She said "Nope, no pets. Never have. I grew up with dogs etc and love animals but have no desire to 'keep' one.. because I love them! I'm away so much I think it'd be really unfair. However, there are a pair of dunnocks (fnarr fnarr) in the back garden and I feed them, as well as scare off magpies/cats who have a go at them".

So, it doesn't matter how famous, most of our 'rock stars' are soft sods and totally let the side down stereotype-wise. There's barely a clichéd pet name here, how very very normal.

Pic of a 'Goth Pet' from The Lavender Pillow, check it out HERE