animals: cats and dogs

When I was seven, my uncle, who lived upstairs from us, brought home a puppy, which he eventually gave to my sister and me. He and my aunt said it was "part dalmatian and part travelling salesman," so for years I thought there was a breed of dog called a travelling salesman. I wondered why I never saw any reference to it anywhere. I figured it out when I was around twelve and started hearing those jokes.

I used to and sometimes still think, that there was people inside my dogs. That since the begining of time people hid themselves in dog outfits, I was of-course never afraid to change in front of them because all my dogs were girls, then I got a boy dog. he ran away. This theory was destroyed when my dog had puppies.

I used to be afraid to let our cat sleep in my bed with me, because my brother told me that cats suck out your souls through your nose while you are sleeping. I know, I was a deeply disturbed child.

When I was little, our cat had kittens, which she kept for a while in a cardboard box that we provided for her. Since I heard the kittens collectively called a litter of kittens, I called the box a litter box. Several people laughed at me at the time for that, and I had no idea why. Later when I learned what a litter box is, I found it very curious that cats have litters of kittens, but a litter box is what cats poo in. In fact, I STILL find it curious.

My dad sold purebred hunting dogs. One customer came to buy one, and he was really impressed with my little mongrel dog. My dad said, “Mary, this man said he would give you $50 for your dog.”

I said, “Okay, but what does a dog want with money?”

I used to believe I could teach the cat to read because I'd caught him watching TV. So I spent several hours trying to teach him the alphabet. He never got the hang of it, though.

I used to believe that dogcatchers were evil people who just drove around taking every dog they saw, stray or not. It scared me because I've always had dogs and I was afraid they'd get kidnapped. I think I got it from watching Garfield and Friends or something.

When I was about 4 or 5 and I saw my cat, Baby, taking a nap, I would stare at her and convince myself that she had died. I would then walk up to my "dead" cat and pet her on the head and whisper 'goodbye, Baby' without trying to tear up and stay strong. I would then rejoice and be in complete awe when she woke up. It took me a while to realize that Baby really was just sleeping and now that I'm 16 and still have the same cat, I sometimes pet her while she's sleeping just to make sure she's going to wake up.

I used to believe until I was about 15 that if you had a scrape or cut or a wound, if you'd let your dog lick the wound it would be better than any medicine because my dad had told me that dog saliva is better than medicine. Besides that St. Lazarus guy from church had let dogs lick his wounds...

I had my sister believing for years that I could communicate with cats in space. My ears used to ring all the time when I was kid. I would put my finger in my ear to stop it. My sister asked me why I did that and I told her I was receiving a communicatiion from the the leader of the space cats. She believed me for years.

When my sister and I were 5 & 6 respectively, I told my sister that the dog doo in our front yard, bleached white from the sun, were dinosaur bones.
After telling her that, she would fill her pockets with sun bleached dog doo all the time. This went on for about a year. Our mom used to empty our pockets prior to doing the wash. I remember our mom always telling her to stop doing that. She would stop for awhile, then start collecting again.

When I was about 6, I hated to eat the crust on my PB& J sandwhich, and my older brother told me that everytime I don't eat the crust The terrorists kill a kitten.

When I was a kid, I was looking at a book about dogs and I noticed the breed called Border Collie. It didn't seem to look much like any Collie that I'd known about, and I doubted that I'd ever seen a Border Collie. That all seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, since where I leved in the U.S. was nowhere near a border with either Canada or Mexico. I even thought perhaps if you had one of the more familiar kinds of Collie dogs and then moved to somewhere near a border, the dog would then grow to look like a Border Collie like in the picture I saw.

When I was young, I used to think that my dogs would wait until my whole family was asleep then unzip their animal costumes (on their bellies) and pop out to act like we do. I imagined them sitting properly in chairs and fetching cups from the cupboards. This would, of course, end as dawn was approaching and we were about to wake up. They would climb back into their pet costume and resume their place as our pets. Everytime they would roll onto their back for a scratch I would look for the zipper.

We own this very tiny little book, it's Robert Munch's "Mud Puddle" but it's a very small copy. I thought it was a nice size for cats.

I spent a few months trying to teach my cat to read, as she always looked at the pages so intently. Then I decided my cat could read and stopped trying to teach her.

When I was young, my grandmother told me that dogs attracted lightning. It was her way of keeping wet dogs off the front porch. I believed this for years, it almost seems plausible now.