The official name of the little guy has now been declared. While Kate didn’t enunciate her reasons, I have the following theories:

1. He’s grey and white. He sorta looks like a partially-burned charcoal chunk.
    
2. He has a charcoal-like smudge. Underneath his chin, he has a smudge of grey in the white of his bib.
    
3. His first action. This is, I think, the main reason for the name. When Katie was opening gifts Christmas morning, she heard a soft mew. She thought it was coming from a bag, so she opened it up only to find therein some cat toys. She then heard another soft mew, and decided it was in a box with a removable lid…when she opened that, a little grey-and-white head popped out. She jumped and leaned backwards, and the kitten immediately hopped out of the box and ran directly to the opened fireplace (yes, I always leave the glass doors and damper open Christmas eve…why increase the difficulty for the big guy?) and jumped in - my wife needed to use wet paper towel to get the soot and cinders off of the little guy so he wouldn’t make himself sick cleaning. It is the concerted opinion of the household that the only conceivable reason he would do this so immediately is that since this was the way he came in, he thought he might be able to go home the same way, not realizing this was his home.

Yes, this actually happened (we have the video)…so Cinders it is.