"Serendipitously, my family once owned a dog named Strider. It's a good name."

Yep. Which was why my feisty black female space-pilot character Leonie Strider (star of a couple of space operas I wrote 'way back) gave her name to a wimpy white male cat: as soon as Pam and I saw him it just seemed the natural name for him (not the "Leonie" part, of course). Maybe we'd had a couple of beers or something . . .