Some people never learn. My father is one of those people. For someone as educated and intelligent as he is, I’d expect him to know better by now. Yet, his past experiences have taught him nothing when it comes to pets. He still prefers dogs to cats. Suggest, “Ah, Dad, get a life. Get a cat” and you’ll see the veins stand up on his neck. The mere thought of a cat causes his blood to surge. And it’s always been that way.
I remember as a child seeing some cute cuddly kittens in a box outside the grocery store when I was shopping with my mother.
A sign on the box said “Free kittens.” So, I picked up one and asked, “Mom, can we have a kitten?”
Seemed innocent enough to me, but Mother gasped like she had something stuck in her throat and couldn’t breathe.
“Eeeek.....NO..... ,” she wheezed, “your father would have a FIT. He HATES cats! He’d probably drown the poor little thing if we brought it home.”
Fearing for the tiny kitty’s life I quickly set it back down in the box, and never, ever (not even once) asked for a kitten again. My mother had planted visions of my father, the cat murderer, in my head, and I wasn’t about to furnish him with unsuspecting little victims.
Mother never could give me a reason for my father’s strong dislike of cats. We moved on - to the world of dogs.
What a world it was (and still is). Somehow every dog my father has ever owned has had “a fungus.”
We’ve had Chows with a fungus, Poodles with a fungus, Labrador Retrievers with a fungus.
If it was our dog - it had a fungus.
I was grown before I realized a fungus wasn’t a body part of all dogs (“What do you mean your dog has no fungus?” I’d ask my friends. “What’s wrong with him?”).
And dogs with a fungus always had to eat special food (something oily for their coats), take little pills (cuts down on the itch, so they don’t scratch themselves to death), and be given baths with special shampoo (don’t ask, I don’t know).
Our most memorable family trip was the time we took our “fungused” Labrador Retriever with us when we moved across country, and on the way stopped at a motel that did not allow dogs in the rooms.
They had a kennel out back, but my brother decided to sneak the dog into our room anyway while Dad was unloading the car and mother was getting ice.
We hadn’t been in the room two minutes when the dog relieved herself on the carpet. To make things worse, my brainy brother picked up the mess with some paper towels we had in the car. He flushed them down the toilet only to stop up the plumbing so bad my mother had to call the manager, who promptly sent someone to help us.
My brother stuffed the dog in a closet while two men removed the largest piece of dog excrement in motel history from our toilet.
I can still recall the way those men looked at us that night. We all knew they were sizing up the whole family, wondering which one of us was responsible for that giant clump buried in soggy paper towels.
Everyone kept quiet about the dog, but I knew each of us wanted to blurt out, “It wasn’t me. Our dog did that!”
The years and the dogs have come and gone.
Now my parents own not one dog, but three.
Their house has more baby gates than a family with quadruplets because the dogs can’t be trusted not to tear up the furniture.
Last year these wonderful dogs were sent away to learn a few manners at doggie boarding school, but were immediately sent home when one of them bit the teacher.
Oh, well. You can’t teach an old ma..., I mean dog, new tricks. But you can get a ca. . .caaaa. . . caaaa....
I can't even say it!
I give up. It’s always been and it always will be - dogs for Dad.
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