Last year’s version of the October Memoir and Backstory Challenge was organized by year — one post per year through age 25. That teased out some memories that I would never have managed with a different structure. But it made it difficult to cover topics that were lived through multiple years, although I did manage a couple of retrospective posts on houses and schools:
- Places. All the family houses (five before I turned 7).
- Schools. All the schools I went to in Louisiana, Missouri, with photos from October 2012.
This year, we’re covering “Childhood” as the first week’s posts of the October Memoir Challenge. I decided to choose a theme for each of these posts that is something that was a big feature of my childhood and, for whatever reason, doesn’t show up much in my adult life. Today’s topic is pets.
Me with Jupiter, our first cat. I’m probably about three here. Aren’t the tiny saddle shoes precious?
When people ask if I have pets, I say “No. I have allergies.” I grew up with cats, anyway, because everyone in the family liked having them. I didn’t realize until I went away to college how sick the cats were making me. A few days of dorm living and, for the first time in my life, I didn’t wake up sneezing.
My brother and me. I’m not sure which cat this was. I think we had a couple of tiger kitties in a row. The first was named Plato. Dale and I thought that was because he played with toes (not getting the Classical theme at all). So, we named the next kitten Playfur because he liked to play with my fuzzy slippers.
Fortunately, it takes a couple of days of exposure to pets to awaken the symptoms (especially if I wash my hands a lot), so I can enjoy other people’s pets.
Lamo (named after Louisiana, Missouri) was the cat who lived the longest with us. I picked him out of a neighbor’s litter when I was 8. I figured out pretty quickly that Lamo liked best the family member who fed him, so I took over that chore.
Check out Jane Ann McLachlan’s blog for more October memoir posts: October Memoir Challenge.
Did you have pets as a child? Do you now?
