Yes...

use strict; 
use warnings; 
use Data::Dumper::Simple;

my $string = 'Tom.Dog.Ben.Cat';
my (@a1, @a2, @a3, @a4);
($a1[0], $a2[0], $a3[0], $a4[0]) = split /\./, $string;
print Dumper(@a1, @a2, @a3, @a4);

__END__

@a1 = (
        'Tom'
      );
@a2 = (
        'Dog'
      );
@a3 = (
        'Ben'
      );
@a4 = (
        'Cat'
      );
[download]

... but what do you really want to do?

You should consider a Perl data structure: perldsc