California Bloggin' v5.0 :: Desiderium

I was in high school when my parents finally decided it was okay for us to have a pet. My brother had turtles. I had a salamander (Sammy). We all had goldfish. But they decided we were ready for a cat. Actually, it was my mom who gave the go-ahead. gave in to our pleading. My dad didn't want a cat in the house. No way. No how. So, around the time of my brother's 7th birthday (I think it was his 7th) we got Chico Ringo. (I was the only person in the house with a crush on Freddie Prinze). My dad looked at her, then disappeared for a while. When he came back, he had a little white ceramic bowl with him. That had been his cat's feeding dish when he was a little boy. We later learned that the reason my dad didn't want us to have a cat is that he was so devastated when his cat died. He didn't want us to go through that, and he didn't want to go through it again either. When Chico Ringo died 14 years later, we were all pretty upset. But my dad is the one who made a memorial marker out of a stone and placed it under the rose bush where Chico Ringo liked to sun herself in the backyard.