Kitty and Red Beard

My mother said that when I was born, I was so tiny and cute like a kitten, so she gave me the "milkname" of Kitty, A "milkname" is a kind of pet name for the family to use. So, my milkname of Kitty stuck with me. 
My family had no idea that I totally and absolutely dislike cats. I detest cats. I am afraid of cats, even kittens.
My mother loved animals. She kept cats and sometimes dogs in the house, except during the War Years (and we had a number of wars, in particular, when we were under Japanese occupation) when I am sure my father struggled to keep the family and our servants fed. 
One day, this little kitten came into my bedroom. I was terrified. I tried to get it to leave my room. I gestured. I made noises. It just tilted its head, looked up at me, and mewed. Then, it jumped on to my chair. I thought, great, now there was a chance for me to get the kitten out of my room. So I picked up the chair with the kitten comfortably lying in it, and tried to carry the chair into my mother's room. Of course, as soon as I picked up the chair, the kitten jumped off it.
I was almost in tears and was at a loss as to what to do next.
My family never let me live down this story.
Till this day, cats and I don't get along.
Because I was born near Russia, some of my mother's cousins nicknamed me "Red Beard". We had a number of Russians in Shanghai, most of them White Russians, and a number of the men had red beards. My mother's cousins were of my age, and they played with me a lot when we were young. They would sometimes call me Red Beard. However, the name Red Beard did not stick like my name Kitty did.
While we are on the subject of names, BEWARE, all parents, you need to consider carefully how the names sound, how the names could be misspelled, etc., when you name your children.
My grandfather named me. Actually, the two characters he gave me as my name were very proper and somewhat grand. My given name is Moo Yi. (This is a phonetic translation.) Moo, in Chinese, means admire. Nothing wrong with that. Yi means rites, ceremonies, etc. A quite respectable name and not too sugary for a girl. However, when you pronounce it in Shanghai dialect, it sounds just like when you say ants. Guess what my nickname in school was? Ant.
Till this day, I can still hear the snicker of the other children when it was roll-call time.
I did survive it all and my second cousins still call me Kitty.