I was a rather paranoid kid and remember convincing myself when I was quite young that my cat, Flower, was a robot and was in fact spying on me. I even tried (very gently) to pull her head off to prove it!

HungryStarfish

I had a pet cat named Pippy, we got him when I was a kitten, and I remember I used to think that he would grow up into an adult, and the two of us would get married. I imagined him all dressed up and standing on two feet like Puss 'n Boots. I guess I thought his walking on four legs was similar to babies crawling.

Alison

When I was little we lived on a farm, and there were a lot of wild cats. My sister told me that the reason the cats never came near people was because I was evil, and they could sense that. She told me that all that cats had been friendly before I was born.

traumatized by older sibling

When I was a child, I told my parents that I wanted a French poodle because I believed that it would bark in French.

Marie

Once I was playing at my friend Corey's house and his dog was following us around the yard. I wanted the dog to play fetch like on cartoons, but he was only interested in the stick if I held it, so I let him chew on it.
Corey looked over and screamed, "Stop feeding sticks to my dog! He's a robot dog and you'll jam up his gears!"
When I said I didn't believe him he said, "Oh yeah? Well if he's not a robot dog, then why do I have to feed him battery acid?"
I believed him, and when the dog was hit by a car a few months later, I knew my sticks were the REAL reason he died.

Kendra

As a kid I was always very impressed with people in Quebec who had such well trained dogs. After all, it has to be doubly difficult to teach a dog to obey commands in a foreign language such as French. I was also a bit jealous that the dogs understood more French than I did. (I was about 11 when I figured that one out.)

mags

When I was around four to six years old, I thought that if you were petting an animal and didn't wash your hands before you ate something, you'd turn into that animal. I was always too scared to test this though, because I wasn't quite sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life as a cat or a dog...

Silly girl

My son used to call Dalmatians - at the age of thirty-three still does call them, in fact - Raisin Dogs. It was only recently that I asked him why: he had believed that they were made of flour, with raisins stuck in them.

Peter Firth

I believed that when a cat ate a mouse, the mouse went to live in the cats tail. How else did the the tip of the cats tail move so seemingly independent from the rest of the cat? And that would explain why the cats liked to chase their tale!

Ness

When I was little I thought that if I slept in the bed with my male cat, Rusty, I would get pregnant, and that I would have kittens. I thought my mom would be really mad at me.

My mom would watch a lot of soaps and they always said so-and-so was "sleeping" with so-and-so, and got pregnant. Everybody seemed really mad about that. So, I thought sleeping in the bed with my cat would make me prego... and I wanted to have more kitties!

Rachel

Having seen the testicals on my neighbour's large short-haired dog, I was convinced that that was were dogs kept the cores of any apples they had eaten.

Mike B.

I was always told that if the dog was wagging its tail, it was happy and friendly. If the cat is switching its tail, it was agitated and likely to scratch. I tested this explanation by forcing our happy dog's wagging still. It very quickly became unhappy and bit me. Voila! The adults were right. So, naturally, the next step would be to force the cat's switching tail to hold still and it would be happy... the results weren't what I was expecting.

Tokeca

I used to believe that when my dog went out to poo, he was actually laying an egg. I saw him kind of sit down, strain, and then walk away. My mom was really surprised when I brought this "egg" into the house for her to see. Well, after washing all the crap off my hands, I realized that it wasnt an egg after all.

Matt Scheeren

I was about four when i decided that my cat's whiskers hurt her like quills stuck in her face. She was quite unhappy when I cut them off to make her more comfortable. . . .

Tandy

I used to believe that if a cat didn't have a little patch of white fur under their chin, they wouldn't be able to purr. My father called it "purr-fur" and whenever we met a new cat, he would show me where the white fur was (not always visible to my eyes) and then tickle the cat until it purred.

Kitty

My 11 year old son is pretty smart-- he's on the honor roll at school-- but until recently he thought cats could understand English. He was very concerned that when I called one our cats a "reprehensible quadruped" it would hurt her feelings.

Tom in Atlanta

I had a really smart dog, Sandy, a Sheltie. She knew when you were going to take her for a walk, recognized the words "go for a walk," and that kind of thing. She really was a great and intelligent girl. But she couldn't actually speak. That's where I was incorrect. I would spend an hour or so maybe once a week, after school, alone in the house with Sandy, pleading with her to chat with me, and often promised that I would protect her, and never let them give her a lobotomy. She held out. I'm still not convinced, though.

Ambrosia

my brother, at age 18, said in all seriousness to me that the reason why my cat is so flexible is that it does not have a backbone.

marcel

When I was in Kindergarden my parents brought home a puppy and told me it was a Collie puppy since I loved the show 'Lassie' so much. I believed them for years, and patiently waited for the puppy to grow, later to find out it was a chihuahua.

Anon

I used to think that cats could see so well in the dark because they had glow-in-the-dark eyes ["shiny eyes"]. I would stare at the sun to charge up my eyes so I'd see better at night.

nooobody