My parents, though they are lovely people, were terrible pet owners when I was growing up. All of our cats either died early or dissapeared, and our choice of dogs was poor, to say the least. Our dog Gus was large, aggressive and untrained. All of these were our fault. He had a tendency to bite my sister’s boyfriends, which made me love him, but created an obvious liability problem. My parents at a ‘family meeting’ decided it was time to find him a new home. They have always steadfastly claimed that he did indeed go to a farm, but now I am starting to wonder.
My father was more direct about the deaths of our animals. Our cat Mouse was an outdoors cat, but he always stayed close to home and was very loving and affectionate. So, when he failed to come around over the course of a weekend we were worried. After much searching and calling his name my father called me over to our shed. He said “Well, I found Mouse” in a voice that didn’t give me a hint whether this was a good or bad thing. So I walk over and look in the shed and Mouse had hung himself. His collar had caught on a peg for hanging tools and he was all twisted up in it and bloated. Now I am all for honesty with your children, but I was ten. I could really have been spared the sight, or given a little better warning. Thanks Dad.
fruitbat, as a cat lover with four of the little guys myself, I really and truly sympathize with your loss.
Having said that…oh damn, that story made the evil side of me laugh out loud. Did he leave behind a note saying “Goodbye cruel world. Cannot face the irony of my name any longer”?
When I was 8 our first dog Topper got really sick and we decided to put him down. My parents didn’t say “Topper ran off” or anything like that. They took my brother and I out of school, and we went to the vet together as a family. I got to hold him as they put him to sleep. I am at peace with Topper’s death, knowing we did all we could do for him, and I got to hold him as he died.
That’s really great. Theoretically, I would have handled things exactly the same way. In actuality, I had our cat Whitey put to sleep while the kids were out of town for a few days, then told them the truth when they came back. I don’t think we could have gone to the vet together, as I was sobbing hysterically.
I found out about my cat being put down years and years later, when my mom told the story as an amusing anecdote at a party in front of all the family friends. Ten-year-old me adopted a dirty stray cat, and she had him put down right before we went on vacation figuring that I would forget all about him by the time we got home. She was wrong – when we got home, I asked if we could go pick Joey up from the kennel, and she told me he’d broken out and run away, because he was an outdoor cat and he didn’t like being cooped up. Hahaha, boy did she have to think fast there.
(I loved that cat. He was the prettiest cat ever, and one time he chased off the neighborhood bully for me. Really! I remember feeling terrible after he ran away for trying to domesticate him when he needed to be free.)
Mom had forgotten that she’d never told me what really happened to Joey. I had just turned sixteen, and I had driven to the party. So, I stranded her when I left the party in a huff.
When I was in the third grade, before I went to school, I went to go check on my pet mouse (it was the cutest little brown mouse. I had seen it at the pet store in with a bunch of others advertised as “feeder mice”). Well, the mouse was gone. Mom told me she would look for it while I was at school. I was so upset I even had to go to the counselor’s office and I cried and cried. When I got home, I found out why there had been a towel spread out by the back door… One of the cats had gotten my mouse :eek:
The true deception, however, occured a few years later. My mom, my sister, and I had gone to the lake with my grandfather. My uncle, Starving Artist, was left to take care of all the animals. Unfortunately, we forgot to tell him how to latch the ferret cage (you had to latch it funky, otherwise he’d get it open). Well, he got it open, and Hampton, my sister’s favorite hamster in the whole wide world, was partially eaten. Mom and Artist conspired, the mess was cleaned up before we got home, and my little sister was told Hampton had gotten away. She spent months searching the house, calling his name… Mom finally told her the truth a few years later.
Folks, I cannot stress this enough: When you have an outdoor kitty, and you feel you must collar it, get it a break-away clasp collar! Kitties are adventrous, they like to squeeze through tight, interesting spaces, they like to jump, and a collar can get stuck anywhere.
This saved the life of my previous outdoor kitty, who was always coming home without her collar. We would invariably find it a few months later tangled in a tree branch, or on some plumbing that stuck out of the ground down the street (where we would never have found her had she been stuck), etc.
And that goes for flea collars too, dangnabit! :mad:
So sorry you had to experience that, fruitbat. I would’ve had nightmares for weeks!
My friend Tina’s grandma doesn’t know that Tina’s mom told 'em the truth about Fido about five years ago (Tina is now 25). (Their dog bit the crap out of the neighbor kid who was terrorizing Tina and her older brother. Fido did go to the farm. Technically, he’s still there! ) Grandma still tries to keep up the story. Aren’t grandparents cute?
I’ll never forget when I found out that our pit-bull, Tiger, had not really moved to a big farm in New York state. I was at the movies with my aunt and uncle and my uncle let it slip. I was pissed. They did it because everyone who came to “adopt” her wanted to fight her and we could never allow that to happen. It was still really sad, though.
I have to admit, I laughed my ass off when I read the OP. I know, I’m a terrible person.
My parents never lied to me about my pets, and I’m really greatful for that. It meant that if they became so ill they needed to be put to sleep, I could be there for them when it happened.
On the other hand, I have an acquaintance who lives on a farm. She says that people are contstantly pulling off the road, tossing a cat or dog out of the car door, and driving away. So this could be what ‘went to live on a farm’ means as well.
I would like to extend an apology on behalf of my mother for that.
She could account for at least twenty of those cats.
I know it’s true, too, because we was too po’ to be paying one of them thur animal docs to put 'em down and she wouldn’t ever be able to kill an animal.
Or clean up a dead one for that matter.
When I was about 11 (I think) I stayed home sick from school one day. My mom loaded up the rest of the kids, dropped them off, and came back. Well, when she came back she found our puppy in the driveway, dead. We lived in a duplex and thought the neighbors had something to do with it as they were really weird and didn’t like the dog.
Anyways, I’m a cat person and I loved this puppy, so that should say something. So what does my mom do? She tells me to go out there and clean it up.
:eek:
I was sobbing so hard, and I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. I pretty much just knelt over her in the driveway with a towel in one hand and a garbage bag in the other until one of the neighbors came out and took pity on me and picked her up.
Reminds me of another childhood trauma.
My parents got a new car, some fancy schmancy luxury car, and were cruising around town in it. They drove past a store with some teens outside who take one look at the car and start pointing and laughing.
This at first pissed off my parents who thought the kids were making fun of them, but when they got home and saw the cats tail dangling from under the drivers side did they realize what the teens had been laughing at. They then recall having accidentally run over a cat that was already road-mush and theorize that when they hit it, it must’ve been thrown up on the underside of the car.
So who do they call upon to clean road-kill-kitty from the underside of the car?
The cat lover, naturally. :rolleyes:
Again, much crying and protesting, but it’s do-it-or-else time, so I go out there, get on hands and knees with newspaper in hand to start the process.
Turns out it was just the cats tail.
Still, creeped me out.
I’m somewhat guilty of this, except my mother and brother are the dupes in this story.
About 12 years ago, my brother got a dog. A big, lazy samoyed. Pretty much all she did was lie on the tile floor, creating a road block between the dining room and the kitchen. Until one day…
We had ducks and hens. I loved the ducks, and my mom thought the hens were really sweet. One afternoon the dog snapped, killed all six of the hens, two ducks (Andrea and I forget the other one’s name), and the sole duckling (Baby Duck. Just a hatchling). But we never found Luie, so everyone assumed he flew off, unlike Andrea, and the other birds. The dog was promptly given to a family who had no birds, and we bought new ducks and hens.
However, winter the next year I was stringing Christmas lights on the front of the house, and dropped the hammer I was using to put up the light brackets. It fell under the weeping willow (whose limbs touched the ground) so I crawled under there to get it. And there, under the willow, I found Luie’s skeleton. It still had a beak, so it was pretty clear it was him. I guess the dog wounded him and he went off to hide, or maybe the dog killed him first and decided the willow was a good place to store a snack.
I’ve never told either of them that Luie didn’t get away like they thought. I mean, what would the point be? He isn’t going to be any less dead if I tell them, and it will just make them sad to know that there were no suvivors at all. It’s funny, though, since it took over a year before I knew the truth myself, sometimes I still picture him flying away…
You scoff… I had a hamster commit suicide. My brother called me out of the shower when I was 14 and he was about 9. He said “I think Johnny committed suicide.” I hit him and went into my room to check on the hamster.
Johnny was about 2, and had started to get pretty weak - losing weight, going blind… He was just at the end of his little hamster life. Knowing he couldn’t reach his water tube anymore, I’d bought him a little hamster sized water bowl. And there he was, little hamster hands on the edge of the bowl, head plunged in…
OK, obviously he had drowned while trying to take a drink, but he really did look like he had given up and decided to end it all. I was heartbroken. So I hit my brother again for good measure.
Here’s my story…about 6 years ago a student of mine brought a kitten she found in her neighborhood to school. At that time, we only had one other cat, so we decided to adopt him.
What a mistake that was! I love cats, but this one was impossible. He couldn’t be litter-trained and had diarrhea a few times a week. On our new carpet!!
So, Sam the kitten had to go.
At that time, I was in my Master’s Program and knew a lady in my class who lived on a special farm that the agricultural students from UNR went to learn. She had many “barn cats”. So I took Sam and my then-four year old daughter to the farm to drop him off (with permission).
Later, I heard that Sam disappeared. I suspect a coyote got him. That’s what happens to cats in Nevada.
I guess we were lucky. We had a lot of pets but our parents were alway honest with what happened to them. Even when the neighbor’s dog killed our duck.
fruitbat, my little dog hung himself on a fence when I was a kid.
