No Ailurophobia for me!

I grew up with birds, cats, eventually a dog, and goldfish.

I hated the canaries as cleaning their cage was not the most fun of activities; the goldfish were not a problem as quiet and much cleaner – they just kind of sat there swimming in their bowl, neither here nor there, just existing.

The dog was there on sufferance because my mother couldn’t bear to see it go to a kennel when the owners moved across the country and couldn’t take their lovely Samoyed with them (ok it was probably my dad who actually came home with it, but unlike the ducks, which my mother promptly got rid of, Cindy stayed to steal our ice-cream when we tried to hide them behind our backs. She was such fun). Cindy was not allowed in the house: that lasted about a month until she got hit in the street and ended up with a broken leg. She then became the baby of the house.

Most present however were the cats. Back then we didn’t sterilize as much as now as there seemed to be an unending stream of families needing kittens. I don’t remember half of them but when my older son desperately wanted and animal and his father was totally against the idea we did end up with a small, male cat – Sethi (yep older son was in his Egyptian phase). This in turn meant that when Sethi disappeared from our lives, the younger son needed something as well. We couldn’t settle on a kitten and ended up bringing home two. I almost was divorced that afternoon – my husband disappeared for about 6 hours and I had to do some very persuasive talking in order to not only save the marriage, but keep the cats. This, of course was the same husband who when said son and I were occasionally absent, babied Smudge and Munchkin – not that he ever would have admitted it.

When Munchkin finally had to be let go (put down sounds so cruel) due to cancer, I was unable to be in the vets office, leaving my then housemate to accompany my younger son whilst my older son stayed in the waiting room with me.

The pain of that led to a two-year hiatus in having cats, but as I write this, Babette is cuddled in my arms, her head near the keyboard and one paw on my left hand as I type. Clea for once is out and about.

I definitely don’t have

ailurophobia

PRONUNCIATION:

(ai-loor-uh-FOH-bee-uh, ay-)

MEANING:

noun: A fear of cats.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek ailuro- (cat) + phobia (fear). Earliest documented use: 1905.

(from Wordsmith, A word a Day)

In fact it makes we wonder what the opposite of the term is?

Let's take a look

There may be a mouse back there!

You keep looking, I'll take a break

                                     

Cogitating on the papers - the message will pass

OK so I felt more like a sunbath in the light of the lamp

Always room for both of us

Well deserved rest after a hard work day!