Lilit and her kittens

Lilit

From a 15th century 
manuscript illumination.

The breeder of our new little female, Sari Kulha, let us decide her name ourselves, it only had to start with the letter L. We found it difficult, and we had no female L-names in our book of names. 

Nevertheless, we found some names, but Sari had to make the final choice, because the name had to be good in Finland as well. 

She chose Lilit. In Jewish mythology Lilit (English: Lilith) is the name of a demon, and in Jewish folklore it is the name of the first wife of Adam. In Renaissance pictures of the temptation the snake is often reproduced as a woman, very possible Lilit herself.
However, you will find it difficult to find a cat less demonic than our Lilit...

Lilit's first litter

Lilit got 2 kittens in her first litter, and for a long time we thought it was 2 males. 

We knew the new owners of the kittens, before the kittens were born, and they had a voice when we were going to decide the names. From our book of names we picked out several  couples, and some of the names could also do with names from other couples.

Zenit

The new owner of Zenit, Anne Merete Ebbesen, is one of our best friends, and she was the first who had made a reservation for a kitten. She was also the first one to choose the name for her kitten, and she chose Zenit (English: Zenith). 
The name doesn't meet the condition that it is clear if it is a male or a female, of course, but it was an advantage, when it appeared that Zenit is a female and not a male as we thought at the beginning. 
By the way Zenit is the point of the celestial sphere that is vertical over your head. It goes with the fact that Zenit was born with the head first.

Zoogin

We had three names that could be used in combination with Zenit, and of these the new owners, the Balle family, chose Zoogin.
We had heard the name when we accidentally saw a horse race on television. One of the horses was called Zoogin, and we immediately found it a good name for a cat as well. Zoogin won the race, and later on we found out that Zoogin is a very famous Swedish trotter who has won a lot of races. 
The horse Zoogin has his own very good homepage - we got his photo from this page. Click on the photo to go to Zoogin's homepage. 

Lilit's second litter

In her second litter Lilit once again had only two kittens. Already before they were born we knew what we were going to name them if it was going to be two females. 

We had found the names in a book "Drengen i taigaen" (The boy in the taiga) written and photographed by Blid Alsbirk. This taiga is the Mongolian taiga in northern Mongolia very near the border to Russia. The people of the Mongolian taiga is very little in number. They are nomads following the migrations of their reindeers around the year.

Salonqa

& Sarantoya

The people of the Mongolian taiga name their children after the nature or after what they look like when they are born. The key figure of the book is the boy Harhru, "Dark Son".  

Two of his friends are Salonqa, "Rainbow", and Sarantoya, "Moonbeam". We found these names so charming that we chose them for Lilit's two last kittens.