Pet Sounds

Brownie (the dog) was dead & buried at the previous house and somebody decided we needed a new dog, so dad went off to the dog pound to find one suitable for us ("dog pound" is what we called it back then; nowadays an "animal shelter" or similar). He did find one - a smallish hound dog of questionable heritage which bounced up and down on all fours as if to say "pick me! pick me!" Dad said that any dog that could do that deserved to be taken home. His name ended up "Magoo". He was enjoyable to have around until one day John and I found him behind the house lying down, his eyes open and teeth bared and as still as stone. We puzzled over him for some time trying to figure out if he was frozen and could be thawed out, as it was late in the year. Eventually we decided that telling a grownup was the best strategy, so I went and told Mom. She subsequently informed me he was dead, and I was very sad. I believe that was the first time I experienced the death of something/someone important to me.

We had a cat that had died before then - named Supercalifragialisticexpialadocious (title of a song from Mary Poppins). We called it Expial, for short. Anyways, I had not seen the cat around for some time and inquired as to its whereabouts. It was told to me that it was run over by a car. Neither the nature of its demise nor the fact that it was dead had any measurable effect on me, emotional or otherwise. I was a bit older when Magoo met his Maker, so the impact was much more profound.

Post Magoo, Arnold (I think it was Arnold) brought a cute little fuzzy puppy home from somewheres. It must have been on a Friday, because I spent the entire weekend cuddling it. It was scared of everybody except me. By Monday morning we could tell it was sick, the poor little guy, so Arnold took it back and I never saw it again. Eventually we obtained another dog - a cute roly-poly fuzzball we named Major.

We had another cat around that time named Mr. Muffs. He was a good cat, as cats go, mostly white with some occasional gray. He had a large gray marking on his side that was the nearly the precise shape of Mickey Mouse's head. Dad worked in graphic arts / advertising and one of his accounts produced household humidifiers. These humidifiers were supposed to be unusually quiet, so Dad produced a cardboard cutout of Mr. Muffs sleeping on one which was replicated, distributed, and perched on every store display model of said humidifier in the country. Some years ago I found out that Dad had drugged the cat to get the picture because it had no interest in promoting humidifiers or sleeping on one, quiet or otherwise.