I often thought that my mother
preferred animals to people. Animals could love unconditionally and had the
added advantage of never answering back.
Pets fell into three categories:
Fish (who were clean, tidy and didn’t
make a lot of mess)
Budgies (who could be taught
repeat everything you said)
Dogs (who could wag their tail in
appreciation of any food put in front of them)
Fish were her first pets after she
got married. She would wait patiently for hatching guppies and rescue them from
being eaten alive by their uncaring parents.
In later years when Sheltered Housing forbade any pets with 4 legs, mum
hankered after fish. She would scour the
second hand pages of the local paper, buy a large aquarium, have it delivered
and then discover she had no means of filling it up. Saucepans of water later,
when it was full she’d decided to move it to another part of the room, to
discover she had no means of emptying it.
Budgerigars were also popular pets
for mum. Her first budgie she named “Joey” was when we lived in Slough. This was so tame that it lived most of its
life outside the cage, scampering down the back of one’s shirt and emerging
from the shirt sleeve. It would join in
at meals times and feed food from off your plate. The down side was that it left
its droppings everywhere: dining table, furniture, clothes. And as we shall see in Volume 4, mum always
forgot the consequences of having pets.
The first rabbits she bought died
within days of myxomatosis and needed to be buried immediately in the garden. At
other times she cooked them and passed them of as chicken, not wanting her
children to worry about eating their favourite pets.
My memories of mum’s canine pets
as I grew up are of dog sick and poo about the house. Her first pet dog was
also in Slough. Her name was Lassie. Mum moved too often really to keep dogs,
because she never wanted to take them with her when she moved. There was also the added problem of what to do with them when we went on holiday. Mum had dogs “put down” but she always told
us that they had been taken away to be trained as Police dogs.
A few times mum bought dogs “new”
as puppies, like the time she bought a very expensive Sheltie. A sable coloured Shetland sheep dog.
Unfortunately mum had not done her homework. Shelties have two coats, an
undercoat and a very long top coat, which they shed continuously. So the house was always full of dog hairs -
an anathema to someone with a compulsive housework disorder.
The next time they moved (Move 11),
mum decided to cut out the hassle of puppy training and get a second-hand Boxer
Dog, There is a reason why some dogs are abandoned and end up in Battersea Dogs
Home. Within hours of its arrival it
attacked my youngest sister, viciously biting her on the face. It was returned whence it came.
West Highland Terriers were another
favourite breed with mum. Throughout the
years they came and went, staying a short time until they’d out-stayed their
welcome or usefulness.
It is often said that people
become like their pets. Strangely, the opposite is also true. My mother must be
the only person who’s had poodles who developed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
We looked after them once when my
parents were on holiday, they spent the whole four weeks running round in
circles jumping from once piece of furniture to another. When we had friends in
the house, the poodles would keep scratching at the door to be let in. To keep
the doors intact we would let them in and they would once again chase each
other jumping from one guest’s lap to another.
Putting them out in the garden was
equally pointless, they would simply chase each other round and round in circles
destroying fruit and veg plants and, at the first opportunity, make a dash
under the fence and chase next door’s dog around and around in circles. Attempts
to wear them out by taking them for several long walks a day were also futile.
When “domestic” pets were out of
favour there were always farmyard animals, like the chickens, which after a
couple of weeks of my mum’s care, started to peck themselves to death, tear out
their feathers or try to drown themselves. Only my mother could have sadomasochistic chickens
who wanted to self-harm.
Then there was the goat. When mum
and dad lived in Wadebridge (move number 26), they decided to buy one and roped
me in to help transport it home in the back in their car. Yes, the goat was put on the back seat of the
car. Ten minutes into the journey home the poor thing was carsick and then had
a serious attack of diarrhoea. Then the car broke down and we had to call out
the RAC. We waited nearly an hour in the
sweltering hot summer sun for the repairman to come. The smell was awful. Eventually we got the goat home.
Unfortunately the goat became anorexic and refused to eat. Then it started
making loud bellowing noises. We discovered that goats are herd animals and
should never be kept on their own. So they had to get another goat. The novelty of having goats soon wore off
when mum realised that they had to be milked every day!
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