It Followed Me Home, I Swear

As a kid, I really wanted a dog. My mom did not want a dog. So we compromised and didn't get a dog.

I had a dog with one of my former boyfriends for a while. She was a beautiful Siberian Husky with steel blue eyes that I named Siber. She was also very, very dumb. When boyfriend and I broke up, I never saw the dog that I named again.

In college, when I lived in the dorms I established "The Bachelor Pad" for two Black Moor goldfish. Their names were Bubba and Herman. Being college men, they partied too hard and died.

When my friend Rachel and I rented an apartment together, I was in my last quarter of college. We moved into our apartment during the summer and got ready for school. We also got a cat. Truly, it was Rachel's cat. We went to a mobile home park where the occupant was giving kittens away. The small light orange tabby mewed and climbed my leg. She was our choice.

We brought her to our apartment completely unprepared for pet ownership. We had no supplies, no litter box, no food. On top of all that the cat had fleas. We locked her in the bathroom and headed to Target to get what we thought we needed.

We bathed that cat and got rid of the fleas. When we took her to the vet we discovered she had ear mites too. I still shudder thinking about the black stuff that vet scraped out of the cat's ears.

We needed a name for her and being silly college girls we started to call her Fartbrain. But the first time one of us had a date (Rachel) to the apartment and he asked her name we realized the cat needed a proper name. She ended up Chat, which looks like chat with a hard ch sound but is really pronounced like Shah. It means cat in French. My idea.

That kitten was great entertainment for me. She'd crawl into the empty Diet Pepsi cubes and stick her head out the tiny holes. We'd pick it up and carry it around the apartment with her mewing the whole time. Then we'd let her out and she'd just crawl back in.

A few months later it was determined that Chat would be my cat, due to circumstances that I'll not discuss here. So Chat came with me when I returned to my parents' home shortly after graduation.

Chat came with me when I moved here with Craig, and she's still here, albeit older and getting arthritic. The kids are not that interested in her. She doesn't do a lot anymore. When she happens to be nearby and K needs to walk by her, he often sticks a foot out to kick her.

She still holds a soft spot in my heart though, even though she's a cat and I really always wanted a dog. She's been my pet for a long time. Out of all the living beings in this house, she and I have been together the longest.

M wants a dog. K is generally scared of dogs.

Maybe we could get an iDog and that would suffice.

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