We took the Secret Cat to the vet a little while ago, and short minutes later we were pushed from a dark consulting room out through the back door into the sunlight, where we stood blinking and dazed, groping helplessly in our pockets for any money that might remain. Once we got home we realized that we'd been given some tablets to give the cat. (Actually, the vet originally said to us, "Oh, you're medical students? Do you have any way of getting hold of amlodipine?", to which I replied, "I don't think that breaking into the drug cabinet at the clinic and stealing the drugs there to give to my cat would be a good first step down that pathway to Hell which is paved with good intentions", so he sold us the amlodipine at a vast markup instead.)
It was kind of cute, the box had a little label printed up just like for a human prescription. Except the cat's name was in inverted commas, like this: "Chopper" Read (My cat is not called Chopper Read, that was just an example of formatting).
See what I mean? Hypothetically, if my cat was called Snowball, and hypothetically if my last name was Farkas, the prescription label would be "Snowball" Farkas. It makes my cat look like a crook, and looks trashy and downmarket and entirely lacks the dignity and quiet majesty of Snowball Farkas.
Furthermore it doesn't actually make any sense. The cat's (hypothetical) name really is (hypothetically) Snowball. It's not a nickname. If anything, it's my surname that should be in quotes: Snowball "Farkas". It's not really a relative of mine, after all. As the old joke goes, cats don't have owners, they have employees.
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