When I was volunteering with an animal shelter in Alaska they had a cat in the back room recovering from a paw infection due to being declawed. He spent most of the day crying his little heart out in his cage until someone would go in and pet him so I decided I'd foster him. It turns out he was one of the harder to find Munchkin cats (a breed with short legs). I was only expecting to have him for a few days and I wasn't very fond of calling him Pabst (as in the blue ribbon beer) so I just took to calling him Munchkin. I couldn't bring myself to put the poor thing back in a cage so I decided to adopt him and the name just stuck.