My Life Changed When I Was Adopted

Iron­i­cally, my par­ents were tremen­dous ani­mal lovers. And it was a mutual love affair. It was log­i­cal since my mother grew up on a farm where she learned to care for all kinds of ani­mals. My father also grew up in South Dakota and worked on farms for many years.

Still … when we were grow­ing up, my par­ents would not allow us to have pets. The rea­sons offered were var­ied and included their phi­los­o­phy that ani­mals belonged on farms or ranches, not in town. They expressed a belief that a dog, in par­tic­u­lar, would not have enough room to run freely in our modest-sized back­yard. Cats belonged in barns chas­ing mice.

My mother had been trau­ma­tized when, shortly after my par­ents were mar­ried, their lit­tle dog, Pal, was struck by a car and killed. She spoke of him when­ever the sub­ject of adopt­ing a pet came up and cited her heart­break — and desire to shield her chil­dren from expe­ri­enc­ing the same feel­ings — as an excuse not to allow us to take on the respon­si­bil­ity of a pet.

She also knew that if the ani­mal lived to old age, her chil­dren would have to say good-bye. She refused the oppor­tu­nity to use the expe­ri­ence to teach us about the cycle of life even as she described the Ger­man Shep­herd, Shep, that lived on the farm with her fam­ily while she was grow­ing up. She wist­fully recalled the day he died peace­fully in his sleep on the front porch of my grand­par­ents’ farmhouse.

Most impor­tantly, how­ever, my mother voiced her unequiv­o­cal refusal to shoul­der the respon­si­bil­ity of car­ing for a pet. She was con­vinced that after the nov­elty wore off, nei­ther my sis­ter nor I would care for the ani­mal and she would be left doing all the work.

I was reminded of my pet-less child­hood and my par­ents’ ratio­nales for forc­ing me to grow up sans faith­ful ani­mal com­pan­ions when I read a post writ­ten by another blog­ger com­plain­ing about the fact that her chil­dren wanted to get a pet. Declar­ing that she had no desire “as in absolute zero, to have them in my home or to be forced to take care of one,” her hus­band was equiv­o­cat­ing and appeas­ing them by sug­gest­ing that per­haps they will acquire a dog after their upcom­ing sum­mer vaca­tion. In fact, she wrote about a fam­ily argu­ment which resulted in a vote of “[t]hree against one and I feel like a big meanie for not want­ing this.” She is “sick and tired of being the bad guy all the time.”

My beloved T.C.‘er.

Read­ing that blogger’s words caused mem­o­ries of my mother’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tions to over­take me. As did my father’s words, spo­ken in response to my sister’s request that my par­ents care for her dog for a few days while she was on vaca­tion. Exas­per­ated, my father turned to me and said dis­gust­edly, “The first thing both of you girls did as soon as you moved out of our house was get your­self tied down with animals.”

That was a defin­ing moment for me. I remem­ber stand­ing in the kitchen of this very house, my mouth hang­ing open, as I watched him turn and walk away from me. For the first time, I real­ized that he was absolutely right.

In my case, I did not set out to have a pet. But my life changed for­ever, after I was adopted by the most “curi­ous lit­tle cat,” as Big­Bob referred to her the first time he met her. She was deter­mined to live with me and no amount of dis­cour­age­ment man­aged to dis­suade her. She waited for me in the tree at the foot of the dri­ve­way and jumped down to escort me to my front door when I came home. She rubbed against my legs and sta­tioned her­self on the doorstep, still there when, hours later, I would look to see if she had gone. She meowed and purred, and looked up at me with the most beau­ti­ful green eyes. She man­aged to sneak into the house when I opened the door and hid so that she could remain indoors, only com­ing out after I fell asleep, sta­tion­ing her­self on the foot of my bed. Finally, when she left a dead blue­bird on my doorstep as a tan­gi­ble tes­ta­ment to her affec­tion, I relented and she became what she had longed to be: A house cat.

Top Cat, aka T.C. or TC’er, remained with me for the next 18 years until I instructed the vet­eri­nar­ian to spare her any more suf­fer­ing and I, in turn, remained with her as she breathed her final breath. Then I walked out to the park­ing lot, got into my car, and, com­pletely hys­ter­i­cal, called my friend Nadine to tell her that I had done exactly what our mutual friend, Clint Ritchie, had sternly told me I must. “Honey,” he said the pre­vi­ous day as I held T.C.‘er on my lap and the phone up to my ear, “you have to do what is right for the ani­mal. Now you make an appoint­ment with the vet and do what you know is the right thing for her. Then you come home, go out behind the barn, have your­self a good cry, and get on with your life.” Clint knew what he was talk­ing about. He spoke to me that day from his beloved Happy Horse Ranch where, at any given time, he had 35 or so beau­ti­ful horses graz­ing in the pas­tures, sev­eral dogs shad­ow­ing him twenty-four hours a day, and more cats roam­ing the prop­erty than even he could keep track of.

Mat­tieBoo with Sophie the day we adopted her from Pets ‘n’ Pals in Stock­ton (Jan­u­ary 2001).

I remem­bered with some amuse­ment what hap­pened to my par­ents. Once my sis­ter and I brought our pets home to meet them, they could not resist falling in love with them. Despite their com­plaints, they lov­ingly cared for our pets in our absence. And when they came to our homes to visit, my par­ents spent more time inter­act­ing with the ani­mals than with their daugh­ters! In fact, we used to joke about the fact that my mother could not sit down in my home or my sister’s with­out instantly hav­ing a dog or cat on her lap. Later, when we had chil­dren, the dogs and cats hap­pily posi­tioned them­selves at my mother’s feet while she rocked our babies.

Since T.C.‘er adopted me in 1981, there has never been a time when I have not had at least two — and some­times as many as four — pets. T.C.‘er slept on the foot of my bed, nip­ping my toes through the blan­kets, until the day she left us. These days, Buddy sleeps in his own lit­tle bed on floor at the foot of ours, but Sophie sleeps right next to me.

That other blogger’s words sad­dened me they revealed that she had never expe­ri­enced a mean­ing­ful bond with a beloved pet. It some­times requires some work to find the pet that is pre­cisely right and, indeed, meant for a fam­ily so that chil­dren can expe­ri­ence the joy, ful­fill­ment, and con­tent­ment that comes from shar­ing uncon­di­tional love with a pet. Child­hood pets pro­vide com­pan­ion­ship, but also teach chil­dren fun­da­men­tal lessons about car­ing and being respon­si­ble for another liv­ing being, and yes, that some­times we have to say good-bye to those we love. Because of my own expe­ri­ences, I deter­mined that my chil­dren would grow up in a house­hold that included pets. For­tu­nately, Big­Bob whole­heart­edly agreed.

T.C.‘er, along with the other pets who have been part of our fam­ily in the ensu­ing years, belat­edly taught me life lessons that pre­pared me for par­ent­hood. I con­tinue learn­ing about love and loy­alty from Buddy and Sophie as they greet me when I return home each day and com­mu­ni­cate with me every night.

We have a run­ning joke in our fam­ily about our “abused” and “stressed out” pets. As Sophie lounges on her back smack in the mid­dle of our bed, Big­Bob some­times stops in the mid­dle of the floor and laughs, say­ing, “Well, you sure can tell we raised her.” Mat­tieBoo, espe­cially, likes to remind me, as he snug­gles with one or both of the dogs, that they were des­tined to be part of our fam­ily — just like him and his brother.

My four chil­dren (Sep­tem­ber 2006).

So when some­one asks me how many chil­dren I have, I always say, “Four. Two human and two canine,” as I pull out my iPhone to show off the many pho­tos stored there. I can’t imag­ine liv­ing my life any other way.

Tech­no­rati Tags: The Spin Cycle, Writer’s Work­shop

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