chapter one - dogs and cats and rabbits, oh my!
As a kid, I was indifferent to animals. We always had a dog and at least one cat around the house, and at some point there were birds and a rabbit and who knows what else. I grew up in small towns and rural areas with horses and farm animals nearby, and also the animals I was around during the summer that I went to camp. Besides that, we did a lot of camping ourselves, so I was familiar with some wild animals. I loved seeing deer in the woods as we drove by in the car, but I couldn’t have cared less about the animals that lived with me. It’s not that I disliked them – well, I did detest one of the family dogs – but I certainly could take them or leave them.
My oldest sister is the type of dog and cat lover that other people make fun of, the kind that seems to like them better than she likes other human beings. One of my brothers risked his life one time to save the family dog, who had fallen through river ice and could not get out and would have otherwise frozen to death or drowned. Out of all of my siblings, I was the one who was least interested in interacting with them. Don’t get me wrong: I was a sensitive kid and was horrified by the situation, which I witnessed, but I would have probably watched helplessly while he died; not my brother, that is, but the dog, for sure.
I was also quite reserved as a kid, shy you might say, timid even. I was fine interacting with my siblings, but in social situations I was known as the quiet charmer, since I wasn’t loud or rowdy and was imminently polite. It was exactly the same way that I was with the animals in the house. I was never mean to them or abusive to them. I just didn’t care much for or about them.
As I grew up, though, I realized that it wasn’t really indifference at all that I felt. In fact, I was afraid of animals and figured it was better to keep my distance from them. Cats could jump on you or scratch you, seemingly without provocation or justification. Dogs would bark and bite at a moment’s notice, with no ability for us humans to control them. Beyond the confines of the house, horses might buck or take off at a run or throw you to the ground, and again you may have no idea what you did wrong or why their behavior suddenly changed. Raccoons would approach the campsite looking for food, and apparently nothing would scare them away.
It was later that I realized this was why I preferred to stay away from other people: they were just too unpredictable. They could do and say anything, shifting emotional gears at the drop of a hat. At least that was what I had seen from the adults in my world. That was scary to me, and I was afraid of them. Better to keep my distance, lest I suffer even more at the hands of these people who were supposed to be caring for me. People were not to be trusted.
