Cupid

Until I was 5, we owned a cat named Cupid. We got Cupid from the Dillenburgs as a young siamese, which he remained throughout his lifetime (the siamese part, not the young). He was an indoor/outdoor cat--which I suspect I might have been partly to blame for, as during the time he was with us, I went through several stages of "annoying brat" in the eyes of any animal (namely ooh-let-me-pull-that-tail all the way up through this-is-my-baby-watch-me-carry-him-around-the-house). No matter the reasons, he spent a fair amount of time outdoors when the weather permitted.

Cupid (or Puke-id, as I liked to call him, much to the amusement of everyone around me--See this post for another amusing story.) died when I was 5. I remember sitting in the scraggly faux leather chair in my living room, on my mom's lap, when my dad came in to tell us. He found Puke-id in the garage, sleeping.. but he wouldn't wake up. I cried my little eyes out in the chair that was in shreds put there by that damn cat.

Don't you hate it when you realize that you've believed something completely ridiculous for as long as you can remember? I do. There are so many things that I used to think were true, simply because I didn't question my parents when they gave me an explanation for something, or because they didn't clarify my explanation when I gave it.

Cupid was missing the tip of his right ear. When I was little (think 2-3 here), I asked my mom what happened, and she told me that he had gotten it slammed in a door. I was horrified of getting things caught in doors for my first 10 years, thinking that those parts might fall off (this was corrected when I accidentally slammed my little brother's finger in the car door, and it didn't fall off. He did cry an awful lot, though).

It was only about 2 years ago that I asked my dad about that ear again. Apparently I was old enough to explain the real reason to, because I learned that Cupid had had frostbite once.