Pets
For 2023, I’m writing responses to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Days prompts provided by Amy Johnson Crow on her ”Generations Café” website and Facebook page.
As seems to be the case with many people responding to this prompt, I don’t know anything about pets my ancestors may have had. Before my parents’ generation, my ancestors all pretty much lived on farms, and I think that the family’s animals were mostly working critters and not pets.
I do have one story about my father and pets. He was a “dog person.” While I was growing up, we had two dogs – a black spitz-terrier mix named “Butch” and a long-haired dachshund named Carrie. Butch died as a result of his second encounter with a car on a nearby neighborhood road. My father had Carrie put down at the vet when she was no more than eight years old. I don’t think I ever knew why.
Dad always swore he would never get a cat. Until he did. I don’t remember how this came to be, but when I was in high school we had a white cat named Frostie. My Dad was Frostie’s person. The cat gravitated toward Dad and wanted to be with him whenever Dad was home. Dad responded to being adored and became a cat person, at least temporarily.
I remember one silly story about my Dad and Frostie. Dad had read somewhere that white cats can often be deaf, but if they have any black on them anywhere, they are less likely to be deaf. Now, I don’t know how you figure out whether a cat is deaf or not; they don’t respond when you call them like dogs do. But Dad decided that he didn’t want Frostie to be deaf, so he got out a black magic marker and put a big black splotch on Frostie’s forehead. That satisfied him.
Fathers.