I have had a variety of pets over my life. The first one was Brownie the Cocker Spaniel. He was our dog, when I was 5. Brownie was just a puppy, but he enjoyed biting me and chewing on my teddy bear. He and I just didn't get along. When we moved from our rental house to a real house, we gave Brownie to our next-door neighbors. I saw Brownie a couple of years later, and he had grown to a monster dog. He didn't recognize me. It was just as well. I am not a dog person, even though the golden Labrador retriever that was owned by the Dean of Students at PC adopted me. That was different.
I have also had turtles, fish, rabbits and chicks. Most of the turtles were small, and we could keep them inside in a water dish. We had a patio grill in our backyard. We didn't use it except for a couple of times. Daddy wasn't a good griller. There was charcoal residue in the grill. I kept one larger turtle in the grill. He ate some charcoal and died. I had a white rabbit, and he suffered the same fate. The chicks were from Easter. They didn't live long. I also had a parakeet and kept him in a cage inside the house. One day, my Mother told me that I needed to clean the cage. I didn't know you could just slide out the bottom of the cage. I took the cage outside and opened the door of the cage. The parakeet flew away.
I had goldfish. I fed them every day. For some reason, some committed suicide by jumping out of the bowl. Maybe they didn't like the food. When I was in college, my roommate and I went to a store and bought two goldfish. We named them Pablo and Bernie. The water at PC had some impurities in it. The store had these drops that would clean the water. The directions said one drop per gallon of water, but we figured that they could use two drops, since the water was bad. Pablo and Bernie died overnight due to lack of oxygen or were poisoned. We had a funeral for them and flushed them down the toilet.
It wasn't until I worked at Rich's in the early 2000's that I received another pet. The store bought a bunch of Beta fishes as a contest for each department to take care of them. The fish that lived the longest won a prize. We all got small fish bowls and one fish per department. I fed my fish every morning, when I came to work. He seemed a little lazy, so I found a small Winnie the Pooh stuffed bear that was about two inches high, and I put the bear next to the bowl. The fish fell in love with Winnie. It would just stare at Winnie all day. If I moved Winnie away from the bowl, the fish would get really upset and swim around the bowl. When I put Winnie back, the fish would calm down and just stare at the bear. When the contest was over, I took the fish home with me, but I had to leave Winnie. I did find a plastic version of Winnie as a substitute. It wasn't really the same, so I thought maybe I could put Winnie in the bowl with the fish to keep him company. I fashioned a paperclip to hang onto Winnie and hung him on the inside of the bowl. The fish ate the metal off of the paperclip and died. I went to the pet store to get a couple of other Betas. They ate each other, so I gave up.
Fast forward to 2018. Being a HUD apartment, we aren't supposed to have pets inside. Some feral cats started coming around the apartment. My next-door neighbor and I began to feed them. She named the black cat "Princess Charlotte" after a girl named Charlotte who lived at the complex. I named the grey cat "Mittens", because he had white paws. Charlotte died in her apartment, so the female cat just became "Princess". The two cats were best friends. Princess had been fixed by her previous owner. Mittens was a tomcat. He would get into fights but would never win. He would come back with tears in his fur, but he was a good boy. Princess adopted me, and I loved on her. We would give them breakfast every morning and a treat in the afternoon. We also had a third cat called "Little Bit", but she got sick and died. One day, Mittens developed a respiratory infection. He went into the woods and never returned. Princess went through a grieving process with me over the loss of Mittens. My neighbor let Princess come into her apartment to get warm. Princess became confused and ran under my neighbor's bed. She stayed under there for two days. We finally got her out with some tuna, but she was really scared. Then one day, some more cats showed up. We named the orange tabby "Morris" who turned out to be a bully. He and Princess didn't get along. Morris liked to steal other cats' food. We also had "Oreo" come around. He liked to hiss at me. And, there were some unnamed kittens from time to time. A woman in our complex had a cat named "Mufasa". He was a little shy, but would try to make friends with the others. Princess became my number one cat. It amazes me how much an animal can cheer me up, as I would do the same for her. I finally figured out how to care for an animal in a good way, and how much they can sense love.
No comments:
Post a Comment