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Re: Saturday, June 18, 2005
June 17th was a big day around here, too: my parents' 60th wedding anniversary. Our family didn't have pets most of the time, although stray dogs seemed to know that food and milk (little did we know) was always available if they hung out on our porch. One pooch I named Jasper was a regular visitor, practically a family pet, until he disappeared and never came back. There were two prevailing theories among us kids (me, my sisters, the neighbor kids) and one more salient theory held by the adults, regarding what had happened to Jasper. The two kid theories were these: Jasper had been dognapped by that weird geeky science experimenting kid who only came out of his house to go to school, and had perished in some horrid lab endeavor including chemicals, firecrackers, and who-knows-what; Jasper had been taken by aliens, was being used for either evil experiments or was actually *one of the aliens* and had returned to their martian (sic) form and was telling them all about the generous earthlings from Avon Road . Yeah, we all figured Jasper might have just run off, or maybe have been adopted by some other family where he got food, water, and maybe even more stuff. The adults, sound and reasonable in their thinking, offered up the following possibilities: Jasper had either been run over, picked up by the dog catcher (nb: we never ever saw a dog catcher in those parts of the outer-borough burbs of NYC), or had grown bored of our offerings and went on to other places to seek his doggie fortune. What drove us kids nuts was that we'd really adored, loved and nurtured this pooch, and then one day he was gone without a trace. In later years my family got a dog, then another one. I had a dog (she came from the NC State Experimental Farm!) of my own, who saw me through singlehood, marriage, the birth of my first child. She was, or so it seemed then and still does now, irreplaceable. My kids and their mom have a dog, who has doggie instincts that let him know that I am a member of the family -- he never growls at me, and always warmly welcomes me to their abode. So do the kids, as opposed to their mother, who does growl and is never too very pleased to see me nor to welcome me to the aforementioned abode. Now I have a cat. This cat acts a lot like a dog, but is a Feline, not a Canine. Cats are much easier than dogs. But nowhere near as much fun.
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