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I’d also toyed with calling him Caverat before that ‒ which I’ll explain in a minute.
Anyway, Twitch was the nickname of the kid that took Zero's place and who I named Z after when he ran away in Holes ‒ which is still my favorite book ever. Now that I think about it, it's probably my favorite movie too.
Not only that but my other cat’s name was X-Ray. He was mostly black but had several white markings that looked sorta like fuzzy bones ‒ with one in particular running down his left hind leg about where his tibia would show up in an actual x-ray.
So I probably would've called him X-Ray no matter what but it sure didn't hurt that it's the name of the leader of the kids at Camp Green Lake. I even considered Stanley before that ‒ who's the book’s main character and of course, the star of its’ movie. Before that that, I’d actually debated calling him Bob ‒ if you can believe it. But cats shouldn't have regular old people names as far as I'm concerned ‒ with maybe just a few exceptions. I decided that neither Bob ‒ which only came up in the first place because I like palindromes ‒ nor Stanley were one of 'em. Even besides the bone-like birthmarks making X-Ray the obvious choice.
To be honest, it was Nat's suggestion anyway.
Back to Stanley though, even though his nickname at Camp Green Lake was Caveman, I decided against Cave-cat right away. But it did seem to fit Twitch since he was hiding under the china cabinet and all. Another name I’d thought about before she brought up X-Ray was Yelnats ‒ which is Stanley's last name and the emordnilap of his first ‒ and plenty un-regular-old-people-like enough but as I pointed out at the time, we already had a Nat in the house who yells.
That made her laugh but it wasn't exactly true plus on top of it, I ended up having to admit that her idea was better all along.
By the way, if you didn’t know it, an emordnilap is the reverse of a word or phrase that isn't a nonsense string but also isn’t a palindrome ‒ which spells the same thing forwards and backwards. Other palindromes besides ‘Bob’ are 'refer'; ‘bird rib’; 'a nut for a jar of tuna’; ‘borrow or rob?’; ‘racecar’; ‘Yo banana boy!’; 'deified'; ‘Go Hang a Salami, I'm a Lasagna Hog’ ‒ or like I already half mentioned…
Stanley Yelnats.
Emordnilaps make a new one instead ‒ such as ‘live’ and ‘evil’; ‘lived’ and ‘devil’; ‘dog’ and ‘god’; ‘stressed’ and ‘desserts’; ‘stops’ and ‘spots’; or ‘keep reward’ and ‘drawer peek’.
As you’ve probably figured out already, ‘emordnilap’ is the emordnilap of ‘palindrome’ so therefore ‘palindrome’ is not a palindrome.
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