Pets

We had two that I remember -- well, actually we had more than two, but I can only recall two NAMED pets.

We had cats -- one of our cats had kittens. Mom couldn't get rid of all the kittens, so dad was sent to Pitt's Drugstore to get some chloroform. I was probably around eight at the time.

I recall another unnamed cat that died while my mother was trying to nurse it back to health. She was holding it in her lap, and she was sitting on the piano bench when it died. I don't know why I remember that, except mom cried, and I didn't often see my mother cry.

But we had one NAMED cat -- Binky. Binky was a female, black cat with white boots. She was a pleasant cat, but it turned out that I was allergic to cats and we finally had to get rid of any and all cats.

We had a dog, also. We kids had begged and begged for a dog. After all Lassie was the most popular TV program at the time, and every kid wanted their own Lassie. Well, mom and dad didn't want a dog. We children wanted one very badly. It seems someone in the church had a dog that they wanted to get rid of, so after much pressure from the children, mom and dad allowed us to get this dog. Hoppy.

We probably thought that we could teach Hoppy some tricks, and that if we got lost that he would come after us or point mom and dad to where we were. Fanciful thoughts. Hoppy couldn't be trained to do anything. Hoppy was a very, very dumb dog, but if you got close to him, he was a loving dog. He loved attention, but rarely got it -- once we found out that he wasn't Lassie.

Hoppy -- short for Hop-a-long (named I supposed after Hop-a-Long Cassady) was a male dog. He was not a good dog. And therefore he was chained outdoors where he became a badder dog. We kids took him for walks and I hugged him as much as I could -- however he was a mudder -- and when he was muddy, I didn't hug him.

Hoppy was tan and white -- a miniature collie -- NOT! He was a mutt, plain and simple, but he had collie coloring. Not only was Hoppy a mudder, he was a barker. That dog barked at anyone who was in the yard -- a good protection against predators for the humans living in the house.

Tom Lodge -- our neighbor -- fed him once in a while -- not that we didn't, but he seemed to like the dog. Eventually, Hoppy got to be "mad" and Mr. Lodge had to put him down.

No more pets. Quiet nights. No more mud holes. Bye Hoppy!