Pet people – a modifier and a plural noun, or a bizarre command? Your Mountain Times staff leans toward the former, as the latter would likely put us in the pound. Although we work together, individually we represent different factions – dog people, cat people, bird people, horse people and, provided they’re released from the hospital, venom-spitting snake people. As pet people will often attest, it’s the pet that rules the house, which is especially true if there’s a venom-spitting snake at large. But pets are more than just animals. After so long, they transcend species and actually become family, and like family, there are plenty of stories surrounding them. Here are a few of our favorites.


Melanie Davis: Blue’s irrational fears

Blue may not be afraid of a birthday hat, but he certainly doesn’t like them.

I have a large dog who doesn’t know he’s large. The list of things that terrify Blue is a mile long. Among them are curtain rods, twist ties, weed eater string and butterflies, apparently the most deadly of creatures according to Blue.

Blue weighs in at close to 90 pounds, so to watch him lie on his belly and sneak up on a curtain rod is hilarious. If I am having a bad day, I put something in the floor to watch Blue’s reaction. I realize this could be considered mean that I am placing twist ties in the floor simply for entertainment, but at least I know Blue can’t really be injured.

I have discovered all of Blue’s fears completely by accident. The curtain rod, for example, was discovered shortly after I moved into my current apartment. After returning with an armload of various items and simply tossing them in the middle of the living room floor to be sorted later, I went into the bedroom to do something else. Suddenly I hear growling and whining in the other room. Thinking someone was at the door, I run in the living room to find Blue timidly extending a paw toward a stray curtain rod in the pile.

He reaches slowly toward this object, body lowered, and jumps two feet in the air as soon as contact is made. I assume the jump is just in case the rod did bite. After picking myself back up off the floor from laughter, I attempt to pick up the object to show Blue it isn’t dangerous. Blue responds by getting between me and this incredibly deadly stick. It turned into a 15 minute battle for me to quickly install the curtain rod to prevent further fear.

This scenario has been repeated many times. Every time I go to the store for household objects, I wonder which of the items will spark this fiasco when I return home. Thus far, a drink pitcher, camping chair, one lamp and a few garden utensils have proved difficult to get into the house.

In Blue’s defense, he is blind in one eye, which seems to explain some of the irrational fears. If he can’t see the item, clearly he assumes it may hurt us. Perhaps I should just be thankful Blue is so protective of our apartment. After all, you never know when a camping chair may turn on you.


Caroline Monday: Those Darn Cats

Bianca the Cat surveys her domain, while Holly Golightly attempts to usurp her throne of laundry.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am well on my way to becoming a crazy cat lady. But I come from a long line of crazy cat ladies, so I get it honest.

I currently have two cats named Bianca and Holly Golightly. The funny thing about cats is the crazy places they get themselves into. If I open any cabinet in my apartment, they take it as an invitation for them to go inside. The same with the refrigerator. Sometimes they are so sneaky about it, I don’t even realize they got in there.

One especially funny instance was one evening when I was washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. This chore involved opening and shutting the bottom drawer, where I keep my dish rags, several times.

One time I opened the drawer and Bianca popped out. I had somehow shut the drawer with her inside without even noticing. She was unfazed by the whole incident.

Another day I came home and couldn’t find my youngest, Holly Golightly. When I called for her I heard her meowing, but for several minutes could not find her. Then I realized the meowing was coming from the washing machine.

I had left the lid propped open before I left home. While I was gone, she must have jumped inside only to have the lid close behind her.

I have no idea how long she stayed in there, but when I found her she just jumped out and didn’t seem upset. I don’t know that the incident taught her to keep out of the washing machine, but it did teach me to close the lid before I leave home.

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Jeff Eason: Pet Names on Parade

Sabrina, the most evil kitty in the world.

I’ve had pets, mostly cats and dogs, my entire life. After you get to a certain point in your life, the names of these animals really begin to add up. Chronologically, these are the ones I can remember. When I was born, my parents had a Pekingese named Mickey that they had to get rid of because apparently it was a baby biter. Then we had cats named Rusty and Taffy when we lived in Massachusetts. Other cats that I’ve owned or co-owned were named Tippy-Toes, Moon Shadow, India, Daphne, Jack, Bunny, Pet, Frank, Mr. Pink and Miss White. The cat I have now is named Sabrina. I inherited her when my grandmother died in 2003. Nobody knows how old she is or why she has such an unpleasant personality (the cat, not my grandmother). Sabrina’s favorite thing to do is to stand in a doorway or on the stairs and stare at dogs that want to pass by her but are too frightened to do so.

Dogs that I have known through the years had the names Spike, Sgt. Pepper, Doc Jr., Arrow, Katy, Pete, Rosie, Tippy, Hershey, Ava and Amber. Currently, we have two mixed breed dogs we saved from the animal shelter. Luna is my wife’s dog that she brought with her from California, and Gigi is the younger one we adopted two years ago. Both are black Lab mixes. Luna is terrified of fireworks and thunderstorms, which has made this stormy week more than a little challenging.

At one point I owned a pair of hermit crabs named Eris and Dischordia, but that’s another story.


Jason Reagan: The Selfless Dingo

My weirdest pet moment reminded me of the old war-movie cliché in which a soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his buddy.

Growing up in Kingston, Tenn., I had a collie/German shepherd mix named Dingo.

Dingo possessed every stereotypical quality of the proverbial “good dog.” He barked at unknown visitors but not too aggressively. He played fetch and “rassling” games with the kids and he generally behaved well.

Dingo’s strangest quirk would manifest itself in late June to early July. In rural East Tennessee, this was prime time for bottle rockets. For the pyrotechnically impaired, a bottle rocket is basically a firecracker on a stick with some propellant added that launches the “rocket” about 30 feet into the air — hence the name.

My friends and I bought them by the gross and would blacken many a Coke bottle, Mason jar or Mom’s “good” drinking glasses in an attempt to start our own redneck version of NASA. Bottle rockets are not pretty, they don’t produce any flowering sparks except a satisfying bang at journey’s end but launching hundreds of them on a lazy afternoon into the sky or at your Star Wars action figures (“The Empire is attacking!”) definitely ranked as one of our summer highlights.

Back to Dingo. For our family dog, bottle rockets were potential weapons of mass destruction. Like the Bush administration, Dingo was convinced they existed but could never locate them except on a few rare occasions. You see, although most bottle rockets perform according to standard and launch the full height; a few leave the Chinese factory as sub-standards and spurt a few anemic feet before exploding on the lawn.

When the inevitable dud sputtered off the bottle, Dingo sprung into action. He was determined to throw himself on the offending rocket and protect us — either that or he thought they might be tasty since he usually tried to bite them.

Dingo usually failed in his task and the rocket would explode seconds before he arrived on scene. Occasionally he caught a bottle rocket and although the explosion never seemed to hurt him, he would huff and chuff some acrid rocket smoke for at least 10 seconds.

Looking back as a “responsible” adult, I now realize that shutting Dingo in the woodshed while we launched rockets would have been much safer. But when you’re a pre-teen fighting boredom in the New South, you learn to appreciate quirkiness wherever it may rear its canine head. Dingo lived a long life and never showed negative sign of second-hand smoke. Now about his drinking problem…