Aardvark

Oh, here's an easy way: You just set up a facebook account for "Cats Named Gary" and see how many people sign up. Cause of course, everyone and their mother is on Facebook. I'm sure you'd get pretty accurate results. Goodluck! ;-)

That's a great idea! Ingenious!

I created the group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=168641943568&ref=mf

is this an interview question? because there's no right answer. this question is just designed so that the person who is testing u can see how u think. give this your best shot. u can start with animal shelters in a city, then county, and then statewide and give this person an estimate based on a proportion. hope this helps

Thanks. Yes it seems like a brain teaser, but it's not an interview question. We're actually wondering how many Gary cats there are. We have one - but how many more could there be?

hi bjoern...i have NO clue. ha;) I honestly don't think you could find out unless every cat were registered and they're not. You could contact every vet in the country and conduct a survey. REALLY?

Thanks. That sounds like a lot of work.

BTW, someone else suggested to start a Facebook group for "Cats Named Gary" and see how many people sign up for it. I'm going with that approach.

Why on earth would you need that information? Anyway, I don't think there is a way to find that out. Wolfram Alpha states that in 2007, there lived 81.72 million domestic cats in the USA.

Thanks. Looks like 1 out of every 304 *people* in the US is named Gary. That would suggest there are ~268,800 cats named Gary, if cats are named like people. Except, they're not.

here's a start: http://www.google.com/search?q = (32,100 hits - extrapolate from there). Otherwise, there is obviously no national registry of cat names.

thanks

I believe this information isn't readily available but the Veterinary Pet Insurance Company does track the most popular pet names for cats. Gary doesn't make the top 100.

thanks

Some pet tag companies do this too. One called Bow Wow Meow doesn't list Gary in the top 60, either.

thanks again - two great leads.

Gary as a name for people has been losing popularity. Social Security reports that it has dropped rank from 275 in 2000 to 426 in 2008 as a name for babies.

I went down the people route before, too. Looks like 1 out of every 304 *people* in the US is named Gary. That would suggest there are ~268,800 cats named Gary, if cats are named like people. Except, they're not.

you could analyze what percentage of popular cat names are even used as human names. Then you'd see the odds of a human name ever being used for cats.

Balance that against how unpopular Gary is, and you might have an idea.

All across the states, hire cars with megaphones on top of them, and broadcast one simple message: "Here Gaaaaary! Here kitty kitty kitty!" Be aware, however, that not all cats named Gary speak English. A good precautionary measure might be to have other messages broadcast, in areas with high levels of non-English speakers, thusly: "Aqui, Gaaaaary! Aqui, gato gato gato!" "ở đây Gaaaaary! ở đây mèo mèo mèo!" "Hier Gaaary! Hier Katze Katze Katze!"

That sounds like an excellent plan. Because cats are crepuscular (active during dawn/dusk) I'd probably schedule the megaphone drives from 5-6am to make sure they're not snoozing through it.

also some of them are deaf so you should have an ASL interpreter go along with you.

I wonder if 6- and 7-toed cats speak the same ASL dialect. Sounds like this will be a bus tour with all the support staff I'll have to bring along.