National Love Your Pet Day!

NATIONAL LOVE YOUR PET DAY!

Friday, 20 February 2015

When I was about five years old, we took a trip to the zoo.  Most of the day, I wanted to stay by the elephant enclosure.  There was a really cute baby elephant there.  Dad complied.  At that point, I knew exactly what I wanted for Christmas:  my very own elephant.  I had it all planned out.  She could live in the back yard and the basement, and I was sure she would love to eat cheerios.  I never did get that elephant as a pet! I once visited one and took her for a walk in the Lancaster Hills, but that is not quite the same.

Over the years, however, I owned lizards and frogs, a tarantula, a rescued kangaroo rat and a parakeet.  As a family, we had a cat for a short time, but then got Toodles—a great little mutt.  Once we all grew up and left home, Mom had a couple other dogs who were really part mine as well, as I recall.  Of course, my best pet was Murphy, the almost full-bred Yellow Labrador who went with me everywhere for nearly 16 years.

Of course, it does not matter what animal is your pet; the love shared is what makes the pet so terrific.  In dire circumstances, a Pet Rock might even work!  What pets do you have or fondly remember?

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SOME QUOTES ABOUT PETS

“There are no ordinary cats.”   Collette

“A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can’t get it by breeding for it, and you can’t buy it with money.  It just happens along.”                     E. B. White

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”  Groucho Marx

“If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.”  Alfred North Whitehead

“It’s funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn’t it?” Eleanor. H Porter

“Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”  George Eliot

“Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.”  Jeff Valdez

“Old age means realizing you will never own all the dogs you wanted to.”  Joe Gores

“A boy can learn a lot from a dog:  obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.”  Robert Benchley

“I like pigs.  Dogs look up to us.  Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals.”  Sir Winston Churchill

“You know what I like most about people?  Pets.”  Jarod Kuntz

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”  Anatole France

“I made myself a snowball as perfect as can be. I thought I’d keep it as a pet, and let it sleep with me. I made it some pajamas and a pillow for its head. Then last night it ran away, but first—it wet my bed.” Shel Silverstein

“I tell you, that dragon’s the most horrible animal I’ve ever met, but the way Hagrid goes on about it, you’d think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit.”  J. K. Rowling

“I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”  Abraham Lincoln

“It may be a cat, a bird, a ferret, or a guinea pig, but the chances are high that when someone close to you dies, a pet will be there to pick up the slack. Pets devour the loneliness. They give us purpose, responsibility, a reason for getting up in the morning, and a reason to look to the future. They ground us, help us escape the grief, make us laugh, and take full advantage of our weakness by exploiting our furniture, our beds, our refrigerator.  We wouldn’t have it any other way. Pets are our seat belts on the emotional roller coaster of life—they can be trusted, they keep us safe, and they sure do smooth the ride.”  Nick Trout

Topic C: CATS

I do not really remember the cat that lived with us when I was a kid back in Chicago.  I must’ve been about five.  I think his name was Tiger.  The only vague memory I have of him is that he would climb our neighbor’s tree and then jump onto their roof and start yowling.  “Meow!  Meow!”  Eventually one of us—usually one of my sisters, perhaps—would go up through the neighbor’s attic and out the window to retrieve him and bring him back down.  We would laugh at how silly he was, not able to get down on his own.  Looking back, I think we were well trained.

At some point before we moved to California, the cat ran away.  My mom was worried about him being lost.  However, she did find him, sitting and purring on an old lady’s lap a few blocks away.  They both looked very content, so my mom let the woman keep him.  This experience is what I knew about cats, other than the neighborhood strays that messed up the garden and stalked the birds.  When I was in graduate school, I visited a cousin who had a Siamese—pretty cat.  But crazy.  Maybe a little mean.  At first I felt pretty good that the cat seemed to take to me, even fell asleep on my lap while I was reading.  But when she woke up, she stretched and then reached out and bit my hand before she jumped away.  My cousin said something reassuring like, “She does that.”

Can you blame me for not being crazy about cats? 

Obviously, it is no surprise that I am not a cat-person (vs. a dog-person).  But I actually grew to like cats.  Once I met a few more.  The first great cats I got to know lived with some friends, when we all lived in Texas.  Those cats were lovely felines:  sleek and beautiful, patient but eventually willing to get to know me, curious and creative in how they played.  And they did not bite!  I saw their personalities, their interplay with their owners, their habits and quirks and fell in love with them.  I may never troll websites for cat videos, but I do now appreciate cats for their beauty, agility, independence, curiosity, playfulness, and assertiveness.  I would not call them aloof, just thoughtful and cautious.  Admit it:  there is something special about a cat sleeping on your lap, purring against your legs, trotting to the door to say hello, and playing with empty boxes or some other silly thing.

I expect some of my readers are cat-people and can share some great cat stories to make me like cats even more than I do already.  If I owned a cat, I think I might be persuaded to build a wall of boxes like the guy in the video below did.  I especially like how he shared the design plans with the cat before construction.

Below are some photos and quotes that show some of the cats I have gotten to know and some quotes that capture the essence of cats.  ENJOY!

Cats always seem so very wise, when staring with their half-closed eyes. Can they be thinking, “I’ll be nice, and maybe she will feed me twice?”   Bette Midler

If cats could talk, they wouldn’t.  Nan Porter

You cannot look at a sleeping cat and be tense.  Jane Pauley

Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.    Joseph Wood Krutch

A cat in grass is a tiger in the jungle.  English Proverb

If there is one spot of sunshine spilling onto the floor, a cat will find it and soak it up.  J. A. McIntosh

The ideal of calm exists in a cat.  H. G. Frommer

 Happy is the home with at least one cat.  Italian Proverb

What greater gift than the love of a cat?   Charles Dickens

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.  Edgar Allan Poe

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life—music and cats.  Albert Schweitzer

One cat just leads to another.  Ernest Hemingway

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten.  Terry Prachett