Chapter 28

Mother loved animals — all animals. And she had a soft spot for orphans. It was a disastrous combination, at times.

At one point in our life on The Place, we had a horse, a cow, a flock of banty chickens, a passel of rabbits, 21 cats and kittens, 18 dogs and puppies, a hamster, goldfish and guppies, a turtle, a parakeet, and a Java temple bird. The conure (a type of parrot) came later.

Let me explain.

The horse was a palomino quarter horse mare, Terry (short for her registered name, Terry’s Choice), that Andrea had bought from Uncle Louie’s boss, who raised quarter horses and sold it to her for a song.

The black and white Holstein cow, which we named Belle, Daddy bought from a nearby farmer, and we were not sure why (at first).

The rabbits grew out of a pair my mom “won” at the local grocery store one Easter. We think it was rigged. (She was friends with the owners, who thought it was a good joke to give her a mating pair.) Daddy built cage after cage, and apparently (and mistakenly) thought he was going to sell them for meat back to the prankster store owners. They proliferated, and nobody bought the offspring.

Daddy bought a flock of bantam chickens so we could have fresh eggs on the cheap. However, they declined to lay them anywhere we could find them.

The cat population was fairly stable until a passerby dropped off a cute, fluffy orange kitten who found its way to our house, and Mother, of course, took it in and fed it. We named it Susie. Turned out Susie was a boy and loved all our females — literally! They all had kittens at the same time, and we put the whole brood in the big dog house. Mother didn’t like animals in the house, or so she said.

We also had three dogs — all females, who coordinated their fertile times and enjoyed hooking up with the neighbour’s black and white collie. They all had puppies at the same time as the cats had their kittens. Our family was just that kind of lucky, I guess.

They were now relegated to the stable, but spent most of their time hanging around the back porch, by the old dog house — now full of cats and kittens.

Indoors, Mother allowed the fish, who never lived very long, and Penny the hamster Dale had requested for his birthday one year. The blue parakeet, Tommy, was Andrea’s pet. The Java temple bird caught Mother’s eye one time when we were at the pet store — she should never have been allowed in a pet store! — buying fish food, and she had to have it. It was a beauty, and though she tried and tried, it never would talk, though she had been assured by the salesperson that it would.

One morning at breakfast, Daddy said to Mother, “Call Russ Stuhr and see if he’ll come pick up that cow and take it to be butchered.”

Cindy and I stopped eating and stared at him, horrified.

“You can’t kill Belle,” we cried.

He looked puzzled.

“Who the hell is Belle?” he asked.

“The cow! We love her,” said the culprits who liked to dress her up in rags and hats and parade her around the pasture.
“Christ,” he said, and stomped out of the room.
That night, after dinner, he sat us down for a talk.

“OK, here’s the deal,” he said. “I won’t butcher the cow. But I’m going to have her bred and she’ll have a calf. I’m raising it for meat. You will not name it, or dress it up, or ride it. It is not a pet.”

“OK,” we agreed. Anything to save our sweet, lovely Belle. So, when Buster was born …

Daddy sold them both to a nearby farmer. I mean, how did he think that would work? A baby calf? How cute!

He was going to butcher a rabbit and have Mother cook it, but we told him we would not eat it. Ditto for the chickens. And we were hiding the eggs, too, so they would become baby chicks. So, no eggs.

One night at the dinner table, Mother was getting ready to serve the meal as Daddy opened the mail. Included was the bill from the co-op where we got our animal food.

BAM!

His fist hit the table so hard that the silverware jumped. We all turned to look at him, wide-eyed.

“Jesus Christ,” he bellowed. “We spend more money on animal food than on people food, and we can’t eat any of them!

So started the purge.

The cow and calf went, as I said. He sold the rabbits to a guy who thought he could make a killing selling them to grocery stores. (More fool, he!) A chicken hawk had discovered our free-ranging banty chickens and pretty much cleaned them out. We put up FREE PUPPIES and FREE KITTENS signs and got rid of the unwanted offspring. The goldfish and guppies died, the hamster took a fatal leap to freedom off the top of the chest freezer, and the turtle apparently didn’t like his food. The parakeet and Java temple bird lived normal, short lives, but they didn’t cost that much to feed. And they weren’t edible anyway.

Epilogue (Cindy): The kindness that our Mother (and, begrudgingly, our Dad) showed toward animals was certainly passed down to each of us. Here’s a photo of Mother, visiting Cindy in Alaska, and holding one of the five kittens Cindy rescued. She could never give away any of those kittens and kept them all for the length of their lives. The last of the litter died at the age of 19, quite old for a cat, especially in the harsh climate of Alaska.