Dr Brief's cat (Tama?) - where did his name come from?

[jpranevich]

This is one of those strange-but-deep-if-you-let-it conversations...

I have been rewatching all of DB and DBZ and and recording all recurring character appearances and such. (Why? It helps me pay attention to the boring parts. Also, it could be useful some day.) Dr Brief's cat was initially included as a lark and he/she has been in 11 episodes up to where I am now, DBZ Ep#81/Movie 4.

In English, the cat is apparently named Scratch but I haven't seen much of the English dub. In Japanese, the cat is supposedly named "Tama" according to DBWIKI, but that wiki is notoriously focused on the English dub and video games which isn't really my interest. Having watched all eleven appearances so far, I know the cat isn't named.

EXCEPT in Movie #4, there is a picture that looks to be the same cat on the side of a truck with the name "Tama" next to it. In-universe, it doesn't look to be a Capsule Corp truck, so I don't know what we're supposed to make of that. It's also a fairly generic look for a cat...

So, is this Movie #4 reference the reason for the cat's name? Or was the name revealed in some promotion tie-in at some point and this was a call-back to that? Or did the name get revealed later and ended up in a Daizenshuu or similar?

Do we know the cat's name? Is it "Tama"? And if so, how do we know that? (Thanks! Only the Kanzenshuu forums could possibly be interested in such a strange topic...)

[VegettoEX]

There are posts on the rec.arts.anime newsgroup as far back as 1994 applying the name "Tama" to the cat, which is a generic cat name in Japan (think "Rover" for a dog or "Mittens" for a cat over here); from this point forward, every time it's brought up, no-one ever seems to know exactly when this name is given, but surely it is...!

But digging around some more, I'm seeing references to there being — in the anime — a pun about the name as Dr. Brief is searching for the cat during the evacuation as Demon King Piccolo is taking over, so that's the episode range to take a look in.

Seems like a fairly solid "Rumor Guide" entry we could/should add...

EDIT: There we go. Episode 118.



The pun is that she keeps yelling "Tama! Tama!"; tamatama means "by chance", which is helpfully explained in Clyde's subtitles:



(And for the sake of being comprehensive, yes, I'm aware that FUNimation's English dub names the cat "Scratch", which itself is kind of a generic cat name, therefore adapting the name somewhat faithfully in its intent.)

[ABED]

I believe it's that scene where there's a pun made using "Tama" which is explained in the subtitles.

Edit: Mike beat me to it.

[jpranevich]

Wow. I am shocked that I missed that subtitle. I completely stand corrected. I have been watching carefully for exactly the reason that I said and I've tried to catch whether or not characters are ever named in subtitles. (There are a lot of characters, especially in DBZ and later, that have names that fandom is aware of but which are never mentioned in the dialog itself.)

So I suppose that the Movie #4 cat could either be a reference to that name OR could be a generic cat, depending on your point of view.

[MyVisionity]

In the Dragon Ball Fire Safety special, Bulma's cat is also named Tama. This cat appears to be unrelated to Dr. Brief's Tama however.

[DragonBallFoodie]

Tama means egg, right?

[Puto]

No, that's tamago.