Animals

My parents' attitudes toward pets was rooted in their past, their time. My father from a farm, where cats were for keeping down mice. My mother from urban poverty, and cats were occasionally fed strays on the porch. People were important, animals were much less, or not at all.

Oddly, my father's threat to drown the cat, as was the habit of farmers with too many kittens, was more understandable than my mother's finely drawn contempt for people who cared (too much) for their animals. He was reporting a real life event, however unpleasant, not worse than killing hogs or chickens. And there is a reason there are no more "dog catchers," from a time when feral dogs would form dangerous packs in cities, without spaying and neutering, the only way to manage them was through culling. Still an issue in various places. Practical if brutal.

Anyway, the cat had no issue with my father, would lick his nose at night to be let out, and he would. Tending animals part of his early education. I knew my father would always feed me and get me to a doctor, which is not all that much, credit where it's due though. He would do the same for the cat.

My mother would never mention her disdain for "treating an animal like a human" to the person with the pet, I would hear it though. I often heard her harsh complaints about others. She may have been trying to teach me how to be, maybe. More likely she never considered that what she would say about others, I would assume she would say about me. I knew my behaviour would be likewise judged, on everything from color choice to sexual choice.

She spoke unkindly about my SIL and her keeping cats and dogs, multiples of. Now, I had little respect for how my brother and his wife treated their animals, untrained, borderline neglected. My mother thought less of them for having pets at all. One outside cat would have been ordinary and fine. But dogs? Many cats? Harumph. Taking them to vets? Waste of money. Aunt Alma was 'allowed' Gigi because she didn't have children. Still, judged for feeding her dog too well, wasteful.

My mother once found our cat's diarrhea behind the couch, grabbed the cat, shoved her nose in the shit, got bitten by the confused cat, more anger, cat wound up at the pound. Turned out cat was pregnant. Lesson to me, don't let mom know anything. Poor cat, ill, caught short, simply defending herself from an insane human. I hope a good family adopted her later. We weren't that.



I do understand that attitudes and expectations have changed from when my parents were children. Both with farm animals and household pets. The underlying judgement of what is human is inherently better than what is animal came from that time, those circumstances.


We are all animals, and love is love.