As you might remember, when i was young, we were not allowed to have pets in the apartment, due to the lease regulations. But i always loved animals so when we moved to a different apartment, i got a nice birthday surprise.
A kitten!
I was 12 years old and i got the furriest present i ever had for a birthday: a tiny kitten. We were coming back from a chiropractor's appointment for my back and i was puzzled by the fact that we went somewhere i didn't know. My Dad went in a house while i waited in the car. He came back with the cutest kitten in his hands.
A toy?
At that time, my younger brother was only three and a half and for him, the kitten just looked like another plush toy. And the kitten didn't seem to mind being carried around like a toy.
Danger!
Although the kitten was extremely quiet and friendly, my brother was not the most delicate when it came to handling it. He would put it under his pillow and sleep on it; that is not very good. He would press its belly until he heard a "squeak" sound; that was not much better. But he thought it was just a toy. Remember, we never had a pet.
That is it!
One day, we saw my brother hold the cat's head and try to open its mouth with a little plastic toy. Poor cat could not meow and we just not a fighter either. After one week of "bad treatment" from a preschooler who just thought it was a new toy, my parents convinced me to give up the kitten, for its own safety. I was devastated, but i understood that until my brother was older and could realize what a pet really is (and what it isn't), it was not a good idea to keep a pet with us. And that is the last pet we ever had at the apartment.
How about you? What pets did you have? Or what pets did you wish you had but could not? Share your story in the comments below.
3 thoughts on “Remember when… ? – Kitten”
I have always had dogs but also other pets ever since I can remember. My first pet was a French Bulldog when I was quite small. When I was learning to walk he kept on pushing on my backside so I fell over again :-).
I do not understand why your parents did not teach your brother to be kind to animals and that they are not toys but living things. At three and a half he should have been old enough to understand that.
I agree with you. I surely wished he had learned. Maybe my parents just didn’t wait long enough. Maybe it was because we never had animals around and he didn’t understand that animals were not like toys?
I have had more pets than I have room to detail individually. Cats, dogs, quail, rabbits, ducks, chickens, hamsters, parakeets, tortoises, turtles, fish (mostly guppies), those little lizards they said were chameleons but weren’t..well, you get the idea. My mother had her problems, but she never said “no” to a beastie that needed a home.