Why is Franny's cat named Bloomberg?

Answer 1

Why? Well, because the cat is Jewish, of course:

" One of the things that really got u Maxwell Geismar's nose was what he saw as Salinger's craven refusal t admit that all his characters were Jewish. Of Catcher Geismar wrote, "The locale of the New York sections is obviously that of a comfortable middle-class urban Jewish society where, however, all the leading figures have become beautifully Anglicized. Holden and Phoebe Caulfield: what perfect American social register names which are presented to us in both a social and a psychological void!" (In his discussion of "Zooey," Geismar dryly noted that the family cat, Bloomberg, "is apparently the only honest Jewish character in the tale.") As it happens, Salinger is himself honestly half-Jewish: his mother, née Marie Jillich, was an Irish-Catholic who, however, changed her name to Miriam and passed herself off as a Jew after she married Salinger's father, Sol, with the result that Salinger and his older sister Doris grew up believing they were wholly Jewish; only when Doris was nineteen, and after Salinger had been bar mitzvahed, were they told the surprising truth."

Answer 2

What the first guy said. It's supposed to be a subtle hint but I got it the first time I read the stories and I am a Catholic from Nebraska.