Kittyisms: White Trash Q&A: The Time I Killed 12 Cats

Q: I'm super poor. I can still have a bunch of pets, right?

A: I will answer that question with a story.

Rich people and poor people have a few things in common:

They both own too many cars.

They both own too many pets.

Just for reference, the middle class will only have one pet and only as many cars as they need.

but the middle class is dying

When I was a child and we were "between projects", so to speak, we lived in a tiny apartment where I slept in the living room and my bed became the couch. I had always wanted a cat but we were much too PWT to live anywhere that would allow pets. I don't remember a time when I wasn't cry-pleading to my mother on a regular basis about it. When that didn't work, I convinced myself that if I prayed hard enough for a cat, God would send me one. After my prayer, I got up and checked every nook and cranny in our apartment, fully expecting to to find a heaven-sent kitten.

When this method failed to yield results, I went back to begging.

One evening we were having dinner at my babysitter's farmhouse. They were giving away these little cream kittens and teary-eyed, I petitioned my mother to please let me take one home. That night, after years of denying my requests, she relented. I don't blame my mother for what happened later. We didn't have a lot back then and I think it was so easy just to let me bring home a kitten. It wasn't that I wore her down, it was that she wanted to see me happy. I think I get that now more than I did in the past.

That being said, we were too poor to properly care for a pet. We couldn't afford to take him to the vet and unbeknownst to us, he contracted distemper from our apartment. Apparently the previous tenant also failed to vaccinate his against-the-rules cat. We didn't have the kitten very long at all when we secured a spot in the projects where you really can't get away with having a contraband pet. Against my wishes, my mom arranged to return the now infected kitten back to the farm. I imagine that it was a joyous reunion...the other cats blissfully unaware of what was about to happen.