Ok - I'm having trouble getting ANY name through on Test or Open for a cat.
Any ideas or hints? I guess I should have taken the advice to do this earlier

I saw on TTC that others were having the same problem. Sorry!

You could just keep on submitting the name(s) over and over for as long as it takes, right? And be named something innocuous like "lime green cat" in the meantime? Maybe they'll relax their name standards in a few days/weeks? It took me several dozen tries over the course of a week to get my cat named, and I don't particularly like how I ended up spelling it (I have yet to turn him black, guess I better not forget that part, HEH). Although it'd be nice to have your newborn kitty all named and running around, as long as you turn him black today, you got lots of time to work on his/her name. The one thing I wouldn't do is settle for a name I really didn't like just for the sake of getting the toon named. I've done that more than once and I usually end up deleting them a few months down the road, even though I've put quite a few hours into them by then.

Good point, Terri! I have one Lime Cat running around Open now and one Sea Green Cat running around Test
I guess I'll wait a while and give them a chance to catch up. At least they are there and black.

OK... tried to create a black cat on a free trail account....worked...no problem there.

But

when I tried to name my new cat the same name I have had on Test for 2 years it was rejected as soon as I hit the submit button.... I tried a couple of variations...rejected first thing (couldn't leave the screen) everytime. So I typed in one word and it took. I was mainly trying to see if the black cat could be created on a trail account. They must have started a new auto filtering process with new rules to catch more names before you can continue onto the tutorial.

When making a cat on Open I got a bug I have seen before. No matter what you pick - EVEN one from their generator - it will tell you "sorry, that name won't work". In my experience the only thing to do then is delete that toon and start over.

Although when I Xd out and came back the toon was still there with "name rejected" even though I never successfully submitted a name.

I remember last year I just quit trying till a few weeks after Halloween. They have to be swamped today. I am trying a name there should be NO problem with. Last year I got them accepted almost immedately around the end of November.

I thought ahead for one and had it already approved for the past several weeks, but this last one was a last minute decision. From now on I will try to remember to do them in advance! It's way cool entering TTC playground with an actual NAME!

I have had mixed luck with names today. First my hubby and I were trying to create a playing pair named Tom (a black cat) and Jerry (a brown mouse) but Tom kept getting rejected no matter how I tried to spell it. It also took quite a bit of time to get an answer the last time I tried to submit it. Jerry got accepted almost immediately. My son and daughter both got their black cat names accepted immediately. I made another black cat and got his name (Felix) accepted almost immediately. My hubby made a black cat of his own and got that name accepted almost immediately, and then he and I went back in and created another playing pair (we deleted Tom and Jerry since we couldn't get Tom's name accepted). We have a pair of mice now named Lenny and Squiggy and their names also got accepted almost immediately. All in all for us they've done pretty good with their speed of response on the names, but not getting Tom kinda stunk.