Long before anyone posted cat photos online, people in China wrote poems to their cats, drafted adoption contracts, and argued over what to call them. The names they chose were small works of art. A cat with a black back and white belly could be ”Dark Clouds Covering Snow”, a cat in a poet’s study might simply be ”Little Tiger”, and a cat at the Ming court, ”Frosty Brows”, was buried in a golden coffin on an emperor’s orders. How did people come to name cats this way? The answer starts with the fact that the house cat arrived in China relatively late.
Long before cat photos existed, people in China gave their cats poetic names like “Dark Clouds Covering Snow” and “Little Tiger”
