Why would anyone name their dog Kyle? Long, long ago—five years, to be precise—Jeff Owens accepted that his calls to the vet would tax his fortitude. When the person on the other end asks his name, Owens, a test scorer in Albuquerque, says, “Jeff.” When they ask for his cat’s name, he has to tell them, “Baby Jeff.” The black exotic shorthair, a wheezy female with a squashed face and soulful orange eyes, is named for Owens, says his partner, Brittany Means, whose tweet about Jeff and Baby Jeff went viral this past spring. The whole thing started as a joke several years ago, when Means started calling every newcomer to their home—the car, the couch—“Baby Jeff.” Faced with blank adoption paperwork in 2017, the couple realized that only one name would do. Baby Jeff is a weird (albeit very good!) name, but it’s not as weird as it would have been a century or two ago. In the U.S., and much of the rest of the Western world, we’re officially living in an era of bequeathing unto our pets s...
