Animal Friends

Our pet menagerie was kind of limited when I was growing up, unless you consider all the cats we had in our yard. My brother started all that with one mama cat, and she kept us going on the cat population during all that time. At least they kept mice and snakes under control! Once they were in the back yard in a big circle, so we looked, and they had a bullsnake corralled.

My favorite cat was later on in my young adult years - he was black with a white front and paws, and looked like he was wearing a tuxedo. He was fun and playful, and also a wimp. He came home one time and had been in a scrap of some sort, and his hip was all chewed up. So Mom and I went out with some peroxide - I held him down while she poured on the peroxide. Then we let him up. He stalked away down the sidewalk, then stopped and looked back at me and GAVE ME THE DIRTIEST LOOK A CAT COULD GIVE. He wouldn't have anything to do with me for several days. Boy was he mad! But that hip healed over, and we eventually got back to being friends again.

We didn't ever have much to do with dogs, but had a few. When I was really little, we had a schnauzer-type named "Ring."

He had been hit by a car at some previous point, and one front leg never healed and was all drawn up. So he ran around on 3 legs, and did a pretty good job of it. I remember one time trying to pet him while he was eating and he snapped at me! Boy that put the fear in me to LEAVE ANIMALS ALONE WHILE THEY ARE EATING.

When I was just a teenager, we finally got another dog. We traded a bunch of kittens for a pup - he was part black lab and part German shepherd. He had big paws, so we knew he'd grow up to be a good-sized dog, and he did! He was a lot of fun. The lab in him made him a lot of fun with playing "fetch." We had a blast with him running after sticks, old bicycle tire inner tubes, and even a basketball, which he chomped into and deflated. He disappeared a year later, during the fall of my high school freshman year, and that was that. I was pretty sad about it, and haven't had a dog since.

Then there were the occasional episodes of trying to keep fish. NOT my cup of tea!

At one point, my cousin got a parakeet, and not long after, I got one too. A pretty blue one named "Holly." I wanted to have him tamed so I could take him out of his cage and sit on my finger. But I'd let him out in my room (with the door closed), and he just flew around like wild, so I didn't really work with him. I enjoyed him in his cage though - he'd "fight" the hanging bell, and chirp away. I could talk "parakeet" with him and he seemed to atually listen!

Mom and Dad had a parakeet in their younger married years. They told me it would mimic the way Mom said Dad's name, and she'd say "I don't sound like that!" (It was kind of *whiney!*) It would also sit on your shoulder, and if you turned towards it and made "kissy" sounds, it would bite your lip and hang on! Once a salesman was there, and it did that to him - Mom and Dad said tears came to his eyes ... OW!

Then I had my horse through most of my high school years and into college a little.

That's a whole 'nother subject that I'll post about on this blog now and then.

Oh, I forgot another dog --- "Pepper." This was before my time, and oh, the stories I've heard about him! He followed Mom and Dad to church one time, and went in the church, as the doors were open (I guess summertime). He went down the aisle with his tail hitting the seats as he went by ... "WAP! WAP! WAP! ..." The minister stopped and said, "Pepper, you can stay, but your tail has to go!!"

He was also a visitor uptown, as Dad had his business on Main Street. Pepper was scared of storms and would literally get sick. One time the men in the domino parlor let him in during a storm, and he promptly went under the table and got sick on their feet. Another time he went in the post office during a storm and got sick. The lady who cleaned there saw Dad later about it. They had quite a "discussion" about the mess Pepper made, and finally this lady said, "Well, if he does it again, he won't die a natural death!" Poor Pepper.

Mom and Dad once went on a trip and accidentally locked him in the house. They got home and there was NOT ONE MESS in the house! So I guess he waited until he could get outside again! Who knows about that. It might have been this same episode, Dad gave him a good drink, then went to see his mother (Grandma C.) who lived a couple of houses up the hill. Pretty soon here came Pepper trotting along .... "Slosh, slosh, slosh, slosh ..."

Pepper didn't seem to hear too well when they wanted him to do something, but if you were clear in the other end of the house, qui-i-i-ietly unwrapping a piece of candy, he'd hear that crinkle and be there in a flash! Humans aren't the only ones with selective hearing.