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The Best Dr. Seuss-Inspired Pet Names
If you’re a fan of Dr. Seuss (and, really, who isn’t?), then you’ve probably heard that there is a newly rediscovered, previously unpublished Seussian masterpiece coming our way on July 28. What Pet Should I Get? returns to the brother and sister of One Fish, Two Fish, and follows the siblings as they select a new pet. New pets, of course, need names, and where better to turn for one of those than to Dr. Seuss himself? Theodor Geisel was a master of wordplay and the czar of zany monikers (he even created three pseudonyms for himself: Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg, and Rosetta Stone). Here are just a few characters from his classic books whose appellations we think would make great pet names.
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Bar-ba-loot, from The Lorax
This name should be given to a brown dog who resembles Seuss’s bear-like originals, known for “frisking about” in the shade of the endangered Truffula trees and munching on Truffula fruit.
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Yertle, or Gertrude McFuzz, both from Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories
Clearly Yertle can be the name of your upwardly mobile pet reptile, but what about thinking outside the box (turtle)? Why not Yertle for a terrier who thinks he’s a Great Dane, or a feline intent on sleeping on top of your head? Like the original Yertle, a pet with this name just might discover some humility.
In the same book, we meet Gertrude McFuzz, a “bird-girl” who struggles with vanity and envy. Ashamed of her single, plain tail feather, Gertrude seeks cosmetic augmentation with disastrous results. Consider this name for a cocky parakeet or maybe the haughtiest hen in your henhouse.
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Kwuggerbug, from Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories
What is a kwuggerbug? In Horton’s world, it’s a bullying bug who makes Horton bring him to the Beezlenut tree, only to double-cross him. Maybe not an official name, but this is an excellent epithet for that misbehaving pooch who’s stolen dinner off the kitchen counter or gobbled through his sibling’s food as well as his own. “Fido, you kwuggerbug!”
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Oliver Boliver Butt, from The Sneetches and Other Stories
Granted, Oliver Boliver Butt is not an animal’s name, but one of the alternates for Mrs. McCave’s too many Daves (twenty-three, to be exact). If it were up to us, we’d add an honorific. Yelling, “Here, Admiral Oliver Boliver Butt!” across the dog park just strikes us as something of which Seuss would approve.
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Yook and Zook, from The Butter Battle Book
Now here are names for a set of pet siblings bent on mutually assured destruction. Whether it’s an archetypally opposed cat and dog, or a pair of feuding hamsters, any cantankerous animal duo would live up to these monikers. May they learn their Seussian lesson before it’s too late.
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?, from What Pet Should I Get?
What wubbulous pet will Seuss’s lucky brother and sister choose? What name will they pick, and most importantly, will it rhyme? We shall see on July 28!
To learn about the Dr. Seuss Spectacular and other Get Pop-Cultured events, contact your local Barnes & Noble.
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