A Rose By Any Other Name???

My name is Catherine. It has always been Catherine. Before I was born my parents were thinking about calling me Kate but when it came to it they thought I looked too serious a baby to be called Kate. So I was Catherine.  There are many ways to shorten my name, Kate, Katy, Cat, Cathy, Cate, Cath etc but I have always just been Catherine to all but very few of my closest friends who call me Cat out of laziness and I like them enough to let them get away with it.

Very early on in management training I realised my area manager kept referring to me as Cathy. Cathy is the one I hate the most. It reminds me of that pathetic woman in Wuthering Hights running round the Yorkshire Moors crying and Kate Bush looking windswept and singing 'Heathcliffe, Its me, your Cathy, I'v come home nowwww'.

So no, I do not appreciate being called Cathy. But aside from my area manager being one of the greatest women of all time, she was also very very scary. And I did not want to correct her. I was just about resigned to  her calling me that, to be honest she could have called me 'That fat bitch over there' and I really wouldn't have complained. But then it started to spread. The hotel manager called me it twice before I told him off and told him never to call me that again.

A few days later he said something along the lines of 'Your name is very long, what can we call you for short?'. At this point I probably should have said that my name was Catherine and that's what I wanted to be called. But in an effort never to be called Cathy again I said 'Cat'. And that was it. It stuck. I even introduced myself to everyone as Cat. Within a few days I had moved countries and unwittingly changed my name. I don't even know if half the people I worked with knew that my name was Catherine. The fashion designer was the only one who called me Catherine. She believed people should be called by their proper names, having a name that could be shortened herself.

Now I'm back in England I have reverted back to Catherine. But I still turn round when someone shouts Cat in the street hoping it will be one of my Seasonaires.