Meaning of "Pitty Sing" in O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

[HBrant85]

I am trying to find the meaning of the name of the cat, Pitty Sing, in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." If anyone knows what the name means then please let me know, this would be of great help to me with my English class.

 

[Ashlea]

I haven't read much Flannery in awhile, but it sounds like "Pretty Thing" in baby talk to me.

 

[PittySing]

Pitty Sing pretty thing

It's a southern thing, and it's definitely Pretty Thing. It's my cat's nickname and what my mother, grandmother and aunts call all baby girls or cute girl animals.

 

[DondiDostoyevsky]

Only 11 years late, but I agree that it is a "Southern Thing". While I grew up in Oklahoma, which is "sorta Southern", but not really, my father's family all settled in Mississippi after immigrating from Ireland, and lived there for a few generations before scattering further west. At any rate, he used many "Southern" terms that few others in Oklahoma seemed to use. I can only attribute that to his family's connection to Mississippi. When he would pet his favorite cat, he would call her "Pitty Sang", which I, even as a small child, translated to "Pretty Thang" or, more properly, "Pretty Thing." I had never heard anyone else use that term, until I read "A Good Man is Hard to Find" many years ago. Until then, I had thought that was just my father's own unique term of affection. So, perhaps not so unique, but certainly affectionate.