About Blue's moniker: Some might say that so classy a dog as ours, one that was first identified as (mostly) an Australian Blue Heeler, and more lately as (mostly) a Louisiana Catahoula Spotted Leopard Dog, deserves a high-toned name. "Blue," those same some would say, is too trite. (You, know: "Me and you and a dog named Blue." Never mind that in the song title the dog is named, "Boo.")

The name Blue just won't do, those airy types might tell us. Why not give that above-average dog a name to match? Why not Lytton or Montcrief? Why not Fenimore?

Our answer, Anne's and mine, is that "Blue" is the name our dog came with; and that's that. When we first saw him at the SPCA, the staff there had been calling him Blue for weeks, ever since he had been picked up as a stray. At the pound, they'd been sure they saw Blue Heeler traits. Besides, his handsome coat, in a certain slant of light, has a steely sheen. So that's what they'd dubbed him. Blue.

We don't, of course, know anything about Blue's past_what shocks life might have given him, up to and including being dumped on the streets. But Anne and I certainly didn't want to add to his woes by a clapping on another name. And so we adopted both the dog and his nom de pound.

The name of Blue's present buddy, Owen the cat, has a more complicated, even baroque, history.

When I moved to Fly Creek as a widower, I expected to live out my days alone, gradually morphing into "that odd old coot at the end of Cemetery Road." I thought that I'd spend my last days there, getting steadily feebler. I'd finally be found in the house, a mummified corpse, some weeks or months after my demise. ("Shame about old Atwell," locals would say. "Too bad they didn't find him sooner. That must have been a good carpet once.")

But an odd old coot, even an aspiring one, needs some company, and a cat seemed perfect.

I'd had cats before and knew they were great companions for a writer. They're content to sit quietly or sleep nearby as one writes, and they keep all their critical judgments to themselves.

As I've mentioned in my book, Owen was about a year old when he lost his position in a nearby household, pre-empted by a new baby.

His owners wanted to place the cat in a good home, I went to see him, and we struck it off at once. I pointed an index finger at his nose for him to smell; he licked it. This will be a fine cat, I thought. The only complication was his name.

For the cat at that time was named after his orange fur_he was called "O.J." Well, Nicole Simpson had been murdered by then, but the trial yet lay ahead.

Still, I couldn't abide having an O.J. in the house, and so began searching for a new name. Because I thought the new name should sound something like O.J., I considered and rejected Omar, Oswald, Osbert, and several others. Then inspiration struck.

I have ties in Wales, as you know. The family of my late first wife Gwen hailed from there, and in fact I carry a dash of Welsh blood myself. And so I reached into that splendid little country's history and drew out the name of their greatest hero: Owen Glendower, the man who caused such unhappiness to the English King Henry IV. Glendower was pressing for Welsh independence, you see. He won a number of decisive battles and actually took and held Henry's castles at Harlech and Swansea.

Henry finally prevailed; but when Owen and his freedom fighters were driven into the rugged Welsh mountains, he continued to harry old Henry with guerilla attacks against his Welsh strongholds. After a final attack and retreat into the mountain fastnesses, Owen was never seen again. Welsh nationalists hold that, six centuries later, he's still alive, up there among the crags; and they await his return to drive the English scoundrels back across Bristol Channel.

For the nationalist movement, as in Scotland, still continues in Wales. So does the rancor against English incursion. The latest form of incursion is by wealthy Brits who buy up thatched Welsh cottages and tart them up as holiday homes. Some years ago when I was visiting there, a rash of unexplained fires leveled some of those cottages; and graffiti appeared on ancient stone walls. It read, "Keep the home fires burning."

Anyway, Owen Glendower provided a perfect name for my ginger-colored cat. Maybe I should have used the Welsh spelling "Owain," to make it sound even more like O.J., but one does strike compromises. And the cat's seemed happy with "Owen" for the last dozen years.

Owen had the run of the place as sole house pet for almost all of those years, and it still amazes me that, late in life, he struck up friendships with two successive dogs: first, shambling old Zach, the beloved collie; and now the energetic Blue.

Somehow Owen read that neither dog was a threat to him, either physically or to his senior animal status. It's coincidence, of course, but I've seen Owen sitting by Zach's cairn on the hillside. And now he and Blue are fast friends, Owen sometimes sleeping in Blue's bed and Blue wedging himself into Owen's.

Enough about names. Owen's got a great name, and Blue, a perfectly good one. After all, as Afton's bard could have said: A dog by any other name would smell_well, pretty much the same.

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. Learn about his book at JimAtwell.com.