Students disagree over Hall 13 cat’s name: Marmalade or Ginger?

TEAM MARMALADE OR TEAM GINGER?: Residents of Hall 13 and the members of NTU’s Cat Management Network could not agree on a single name to call the orange tabby that wanders the area between Halls of Residence 13 and 14. PHOTO: CMN

By Cheryl Tee

What’s in a name?

The renaming of a cat in Hall of Residence 13 has caused a furore in some parts of the University.

Hall 13 residents are up in arms over the change in name of their resident cat by the NTU Cat Management Network (CMN), a University club responsible for the upkeep of campus felines.

The spat began when the CMN introduced the cat in a Facebook post in August this year by the name Marmalade, while Hall residents referred to it as Ginger. The CMN selected its name from an online contest held in 2015.

The club rejected calls by some Hall 13 residents to change the cat’s name back to Ginger, as there was previously an existing cat by the same name in NTU, which went missing in the last academic year.

“It’s great that students care for the cats enough to write to us on the issue,” said CMN president Ng Yi Pin, 20, a second-year School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences student.

“But duplicate names create administrative problems when we are trying to ensure that all the cats are fed and receive adequate veterinary care,” he added.

Since the CMN was responsible for maintaining the central registry of campus cats, it needs to assign unique names to each cat on campus, Ng said.

Hall residents can still refer to the cat as Ginger, but giving a new name to Marmalade was meant to avoid confusion, he added.

But in a blogpost released after the Nanyang Chronicle first reported about the disagreement, the CMN said: “We understand their anger over this issue, and we have included Ginger as an alternate name for Marmalade.”

Earlier, Hall 13 residents the Nanyang Chronicle spoke to expressed anger at the club’s “lack of respect” for their Hall’s traditions.

“Hall cats are one of the first things people associate with the hall and a symbolic Hall identity, so the CMN should have been more open to our feedback,” said third-year Nanyang Business School student Asyraf Ismail, 23.

“It’s all right to call the cat what you want among your own club members, but there’s no need to go around broadcasting it to everyone on Facebook posts even after we explicitly told them we didn’t like the new name,” he added.

Others, like second-year Nanyang Business School student Han Jing Wei, 19, said that the CMN should have consulted only Hall residents about the cat’s name, instead of making it an open poll for the whole University.

“Though the name Marmalade received 16 votes, only 32 people took part in the poll. The CMN did not have the right to change the name of the resident cat without sufficient votes,” said Han.

Still, some residents pointed out that the whole debacle will do little to change how students choose to address campus cats.

“Even if the CMN has the final say over the names of Hall cats, what’s stopping residents from continuing to refer to the cat however they want?” said Shaun Ho, 22, a second-year student from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

“Regardless of whatever new name the CMN comes up with, Ginger remains the one that resonates most with Hall 13 residents, so that will likely be used for many years to come,” he added.

This is an update of the article that Nanyang Chronicle first published in print. It includes clarifications from the NTU Cat Management Network.