Tuesday Had a Dog and Has a Cat

Yep.

I suppose, when I was very very little, I also had a cat. Her name was Sherry - I don't know how that is spelled, to be quite honest. I never had to write it down. But my brother, he was and probably still is allergic to cats, so my grandma got the cat. She had another one named Pepper, too. She says she's too old to have cats now, too much work, which would make her the baffling counter example to the stereotypical crazy cat lady, as she had a ton of cats when my mum was a kid, but gave it up in her old age.

We had a dog, too, who died when I was... 11? Give or take. Her name was Athena. Her colouration would imply that she was at least half German Sheppard, but she wasn't big enough to be a pure breed. Very friendly, good with children sort of dog. I don't remember her particularly well, to be honest. She spent that last year sleeping, for the most part, so I think I was pretty... numb to the idea of her being put down, when she started to suffer. I wasn't surprised by it, I probably wouldn't have noticed for months if my mother hadn't told me. I do remember the day, though. Right around this time of year, actually, I remember our school was selling pies for a fundraiser and my mum bought, like, six. I probably cared more about the presence of pumpkin pie in the house. I'm not sure she ever did outright tell my brother, to be honest. I guess at some point he must have realized what happened, but it went without comment.

We didn't get another pet after that. We've always had a pond, with goldfish in it, but I certainly never thought of them as pets. They lived outside, they hibernated during the winter, one of them was eaten by a frog (we had some big frogs around where we lived), but I wasn't attached to them and I barely acknowledged them. I think at some point they died? I don't know, for all I know they're still in that pond. We still have it, at least to my knowledge (I moved out a couple of years ago), so maybe they still have a goldfish or two. We certainly have frogs, whether we want to or not, since they just come from the wilderness and set up a home there.

Now, I guess I have Charlie, who is a cat. I say 'I guess' because it's really, by all rights, my mother-in-law's cat, but as I live in her house, it is by proxy my cat, as well. I don't even know if Al thinks of it as 'his cat'. We've certainly said that once we move out, the cat is staying here. And we don't particularly want one of our own, though maybe we'll get a low maintenance pet once we have enough money to confidently support another living thing (because we're not going to have a kid, I can tell you that right now).

Charlie is a cat, which means he is annoying, but adorable. He likes to claw people by luring you into petting his tummy and then scratching and eating your hand. And he walks on your laptop and on your book and on any vaguely flat surface that has your attention. And he scratches at the window at 3 AM to come inside, because he's an outdoor cat who often ends up nocturnal, as well. But he's cool. Except for the fleas. He's brought fleas in here before, and I resent him for it. I'm not very attached to him, but he's a kitty cat, so he's nice to have around, as long as I don't have to take care of him.