Please Don't Tell PETA

#173 - Draw something from memory

I've been working through Julia Cameron's excellent book Vein of Gold. One of the major tasks is to analyze and write about my past. Questions are posed to help with the process. One is, what was your favorite toy, game, or pastime at ages one to five? I had an obvious answer.

My mother was a child of the depression, you see. It seems the trauma she never got out of her system was not hunger or homelessness, but a terrible lack of dolls. Ergo, she bought all of her daughters dolls aplenty, whether we liked them or not. I certainly didn't. Why would I play with something so stiff and lifeless when, as a farm kid, I was surrounded by lovely furry animals? The accessories were cool, though. And if God didn't intend for doll dresses to be put on baby cats, why did he make them perfectly kitten-sized?

I won't go so far as to claim the little furballs liked this game, but my older brother tells me he was clawed and bloodied whenever he attempted a rescue, and once undressed they would often run straight back to me for a change of costume. To this day he calls me "The Cat-Whisperer."