About `Bran'

HITS TO THIS PAGE SINCE OCT. 19, 1996.* TIME IS NOW: Local Time. Do you know where your kittens are? Sponsored by The Corporation Internet services provided for free by Alachua County FreeNet. About `Bran'		Bran was special to me and meant an awful lot. I had raised both her and her sister Raisen from birth, literally. I even have home videos of both of them days after birth and in their growing up. Bran was a `polydactyl' cat, i.e., she had six toes on three of her feet. She was a non-pedigree Blue-Cream shorthair, which is a dilute form of the Tortie. Both Raisen and Bran were very strong, and strong-boned; and they had beautiful coats of fur, which were rabbit-soft and so nice to touch. I fed them from birth with KLM, since their mother, having just had a C-section, unfortunately wasn't able to handle that part very effectively. So they had a lot of human intervention. I tried to act like a mother cat would as I taught them the basics - and I spent most of my available hours lying right next to them on the floor, up close, intereacting with them at every turn (while using rubber gloves for a time so as not to get my scent upon them). But I also treated them as if they were human. So, they got the best of both worlds. They were both very dedicated, very loyal, so affectionate, extremely curious, and unbelieveably smart for cats. I was able to get them to do things that most other cats would have nothing to do with. They seemed to want to do everything. In fact, they learned to do many things by themselves, and needed no real training from me. All I would do is watch them, and if they seemed especially curious about something, then I simply laid down next to them and poked at what they were poking at so as to encourage a little more time spent on it then they otherwise would. That's all. This was to encourage curiosity. On top of that, they seemed to want to do anything and everything they could to impress me, or to please me, or just to participate with me. I imagine, maybe they even wanted to be just like me. You know... "I want to be JUST like Daddy when I grow up!" That's what I saw in them. I was "Daddy" to them; and for all they knew, they probably thought that they were human, too, and that I was just funny-looking for some odd reason - although that didn't matter much at all to them. It was only natural for them to want to participate in all the things that I did, to be curious about all the things "Daddy" was doing, and all the things he was playing with. At the same time, I noted that they both reacted just like human children did in all their external experiences. When you acted happy, they'd look at you, look back at the object, and pat it once more; and then look back at you to see how you reacted, for example. They had just the same curiosity, just the same kind of want to learn, and they watched everything I did with just the same amount of anxiousness as any normal human child. Therefore, I treated them just as if they were literally my own children. And I was just as proud of them, and all the things they learned, and in all their abilities, and in who they became. Because these cats were so much different from all the rest, I started wondering if Dave Alderton's so-designated "Non-Pedigree Blue Creams" actually had more to them than breeders ever recognized. Breeders currently see them as the mish-mash random "mutt" of cat society. But I wonder. BOTH these cats were the same way. Was this just genetic coincidence within this one little family? Or are ALL NPBCs this way, when treated like they're human? I should add that I cannot possibly begin to describe all of the things that I actually learned from them. Just like what happens when you raise human children, you learn from them, as well. And so it was with these two. I learned how to enjoy life. I learned how to notice and appreciate and be so very proud of the least noticeable things about them, and so, in other people, too. In so many ways, I learned how to become a better human being because of them. I used to go for walks around the block with both Raisen and Bran happily watching things go by as they sat perched upon my shoulder; or I would walk them around the block on leashes, which they took to quite nicely. I also took them on drives around town with me. Bran didn't seem to like it much, often suffering some motion sickness, so I stopped taking her; but her sister Raisen just couldn't get enough. But the walks were something I never really did before they came into my life. And while out, I'd have a chance to look around, to enjoy the scenery, and the fresh air, for once. Because of them, I took the time to walk a mile to the store some winding blocks away, rather than take the car. So that they could enjoy a different scenery and see how much wider the world really was, I'd on occasion drive them to the various parks around town, and then take them for walks there. My cats were the talk of the neighborhood, and everybody knew me from seeing them on my shoulders as I would walk. People always wanted to come up and pet them, because, as they got older, they were no longer shoulder-clinging kittens, but high-sitting, confident shoulder balancing cats. When I went to sleep, they would both curl up together on my bed on each side of my chest, purring loudly. They came when called every time. That's hard to get a cat to do. These guys did it by themselves, of their own accord, too. I never had to teach them to do that. I never put them through any real kind of training regiment. Most of the time it was just a combination of their own instinct, and then "encouraging" their instinct a little more. "Going with the flow" I called it. As they got older they seemed to know everything I was saying. I'd refer to something on the other end of the room and - without my even pointing, or moving an eye towards it, they'd look over at it for a second. This happened time and again. I brush it off as coincidence; but I often think back and wonder. And I think..."Why WOULDN'T they be able to eventually learn a number of words, sentences, intonations, and inflections with adeptness?" They trusted me implicitly, too. For example, if there was a bug on the wall, I could lift them up on one hand while they freely stretched and moved about to try to catch the bug as it got near the ceiling. And when done, without even bothering to look down, they'd lower their front paws, knowing that my other hand would always be there to rest upon. I was so very proud, indeed, of these two cats. I've NEVER seen another cat that was as smart as these two were. I knew I had something special and rare in them. Not only affectionate, but they had brains, and could figure things out on their own. They were almost like Pixie-Bobs in intelligence, and like Siamese in their vocalizations, and tigers in their strength (Raisen actually flipped her mother completely over in mid-air using one arm, once - and I have it on video tape); and yet, they were just average tortoiseshell types. Somethin' weird goin' on, there. I always wondered if there wasn't more to their genetics, but I had no way of ever finding out, since the father had taken off the day that Muffin had showed up at our door. It was obvious to me, though, that it was from the father that all these "fantastics" in abilities came from. There was not a trace of these things in their mother at all. Bran was so cute. She learned how to `beg' on her own. She would stand up on her hind feet and look at you with her hands flat down at her side, occasionally swaying from one side to the other while looking at you, like a chipmonk. This she would do for a morsel and attention. I of course, had no beef with offering her both if she wanted more of it that badly. :) Both cats hated being left out of the bathroom when I would take a shower. You see, there was this big, mean, ugly "water monster" which would attack me regularly each day, causing me to make these horrible, loud, high-pitched screaming notes, and every time they heard me make those horrible sounds, they would talk to me, as if to comfort me; and they hated to let me alone in that room without their being there to protect me. I quickly learned that if I sang while in the shower, they would respond...loudly. I started singing "O' Solo Meow," as a test of their musical abilities. I'd sing "OHHHHH SOOOOooo-loo...", and then I'd quickly open the shower curatain and look at them, whence they would finish, in purrfect unison ..."ME-owwww!" I knew I was onto something, there. Soon we graduated to "London Bridge" and the "A-B-C" song, too. While the thought of travelling across the country with them HAD come to mind, I decided not to take advantage of these two young stars. They WERE both "minors," you know. (Or, maybe they were tenors. Hmm.) At any rate... Both would sit on the bathroom counter and watch me shave and brush my teeth, with curious, tilted and bobbing heads and fixed, attentive eyes. They just couldn't understand the ritual of my shaving off all my fur, though. They would turn their heads and look at each other with this "WHY does he DO that?!!" kind of look. TV was an especially interesting thing...all the strange, fuzzy things that magically appear and move around, and then disappear. It was a challenge to try to catch one of them thar things on the screen. It was funny watching Bran's head move back and forth. On their birthdays, I would even set a meal for them at the table WITH napkins under their chins and they could sit and eat and be civilized about it! I'd take those tiny cans of Fancy Feast and upturn them onto a small plate, complete with a small candle - which I would blow out for them. At the end of their meal, I'd open presents of small kitty toys for them, which they would get to immediately play with. (How vain of me.) :-) This of course gave me an idea. I remembered the Fancy Feast commercial where the lady taps a crystal sundae dish containing some Fancy Feast with a fork, and the cat would come running. So I tried it with them. Didn't take long for them to associate the sound of the tapping fork. Both would come RUNNING to the dinner chair and hop up and set their front paws upon the dinner table, ready for the meal. I took a photo of this, once, but for some reason, I can't find it, now. I often noted some apparent `human' tendencies in both cats. They both seemed to always want to be able to do or be a part of the things WE would do. So, I wouldn't keep them from it if they seemed to so desire. But Bran's most famous and favorite thing was how she would fall off of the bed at least three times a night whilst sleeping...or the TV...or the chair... Yah. She was one of those. 8^) All The Cats Got Out Late One Night... Bran got out with all of the other cats late one night about a year-and-a-half ago (sometime around May of 1994, when she was only about a year old) at about 11pm when a friend, visiting until very late in the evening, hadn't realized that he did not shut a particular door tightly enough. (He was deaf. It wasn't his fault. Our door didn't close normally - you have to push it kinda hard until you hear the click.) ...All of the cats got out. (They are all house pets, so the outside world is especially tempting to them.) All except Bran returned by 4am. I repeatedly went out that night, searching for the cats. Mischief was first to be nabbed. Muffin was next. Raisen and Bran, I couldn't find. About 11:30pm, I went out for one last attempt to find the cats. It was SO cold outside. FREEZING, in fact. I was just about to give up and go back inside when, near the end of the block, one last call brought a response from Raisen. She was somewhere close by, but yet...distant. I called to her, again. ...Another response. I turned, narrowing the direction down. I called again. ...Another response. But now, my head was turned upwards. THERE, atop the highest possible branch of a 70-foot tall pine tree, was my Raisen - staring back down at me. I tried and tried to get her to come back down. She'd just sit there on that stupid branch, staring at me from above, yelling. I could do nothing. The tree was located on the neighbor's property on the corner, behind a fence. I couldn't intrude upon their property without permission; and all their lights were out. I wasn't about to call the fire department so late at night, waking up the WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD, to get this cat down from a tree. Everyone would hate me, after that. WHAT was she DOING up there? WHY? What the hell! "Don't panic, Todd. Won't do any good" I thought to myself. "Just keep cool and think. Use your head, here." Then I got an idea, and I went back inside the house and filled a bowl with fresh food. I went back to the tree and left the bowl at the base, making "yummy" sounds to clue her in that it was really good food. I went back inside the house again, and waited. Every twenty minutes, I went back outside. About 2:30am, I finally found that she was gone from the tree, at least. I gave another call, and ... from across the street behind me, came a response in the bushes in front of a neighbor's house, there. Raisen came running up to me, and I brought her and the food bowl back inside. I remember wondering why the hell she had even CLIMBED that stupid tree in the first place. I remember having to succomb to the fact that I would probably never, ever know - because she just couldn't tell me. Little did I know, then. ...Little did I know. ...Bran was never found; never seen again. Up until two months later, we worried about Bran - who, I'm sorry to say, I never did get the time to take a still photograph of. We didn't know what had happened to her. Had she been eaten or injured by a woods animal? Had she been run over by a car? Was she catnapped? Killed by someone? ...What? A couple months after her disappearance, we got wind of a rumor from some kids down the block who said that a "friend" from the "north," visiting a neighbor at the end of the block, had actually stolen Bran - with pink collar and ident tag still on. This at least seemed to give "closure," then. She was gone, but at least we "knew" she was with someone, and "not dead." At least, that's what I thought... (It was interesting remembering later, that they described the pink collar and ident tag. Were they actually AWARE of what happened to Bran, back then?) I Hit The Wrong Scanner Bank Number... Then, two years later, I turned on my scanner and went to hit the bank containing my favorite amateur radio frequencies. I hit the wrong bank button. I hit the one directly below it, which contained the frequencies for portable mics and other similar short-range portable comm systems in the 46 to 49 MHz range (which by now had fast been usurped by portable phones to a rediculous number). The first thing the scanner stopped on was, of course, not a Commission Meeting, not a Holiday Inn Convention talk group meeting, not the local McDonald's drive-thru (which is often funny to listen to, by the way), but a conversation a neighbor was having with his girlfriend. It was the kid next door. He was bragging to his girlfriend, and to his roommate in the background, that he had shot my cat with his pellet gun for fun a couple years before. (You know ... this kid owns a little dog, too?) My eyes suddenly got wide in disbelief. I sat there at the computer chair for some seconds, listening in a sort of trance, before I woke up and got smart. I knew it was the kid next door because he had also described a confrontation he had just had with my mother earlier in our front yard over their golf balls hitting our house. I rushed to record this. (I have a partial recording of the latter part of the conversation, that I refuse to destroy and the laws be damned. If this kid murders someone in the future then I want to be able to take this back personally to his mother and say, "Listen! You had a chance back here to do something ... and you didn't. Don't cry now, lady. You won't get my sympathy. We tried to get you do be responsible and teach your son some morals and all you did was throw us the bird. In my view, you're just as guilty of the killing, by your own ignorance and inaction as a parent. [We'd tried and tried to talk to this woman about her son. We were ignored, given the finger, cursed at, treated all-out rudely, and had a door slammed in our noses. She just outright refused to hear about or acknowledge any problems going on with her son.]) "...Yah, I SHOT that fu**ing PUSSYcat!", he said. And they all actually laughed about it, together. Meanwhile, he then went on to describe the particularly gruesome details about how my cat died. She was in the bushes at one end of the front of their house. He saw her, went into the house, and grabbed his pellet gun. He took aim, and shot her in the face. She flipped over wildly for a second, and lay sideways on the ground with her eyes open staring straight ahead, her mouth gradually opened and got wider, slowly, and then there was one lone wowwing cry of immense pain -- "OWWWWWWWWWWwwwwwww!," with one paw extending until it stopped. That was it. He said he waited a little while, then he disposed of her in his garbage can in a black plastic bag, stuffing it down to the bottom because he didn't want his mother to see it. This kid was so proud of himself for what he had done; and apparently, so were his friends. I didn't need to hear that. It made me almost insanely distraught. I sat there, listening to it all, feeling so much anger and so much pain. Up until then, I'd thought that my cat was still alive somewhere; and then, I found out that I was wrong. So WHY was Raisen up that tree that night when all the cats got out? NOW, I think I know. This kid must have scared the LIFE out of her with that pellet gun; and Raisen probably SAW her sister so horrifically killed. Did he shoot at Raisen, too; but miss? Was THAT why Raisen made it, and Bran didn't? Did he chase Raisen up the tree with his pellet gun? Was THAT why she was really up the tree? Just what did all my cats experience, that night? How CLOSE did Raisen come to being killed, too, then? They couldn't possibly tell me. So, the actual events would forever remain a mystery. May God CURSE that kid's soul! I hope he burns in hell for that night. I really do. (I'm sorry for the language; but....) Some Background... Before I go on...some background. About 11 or 12 years previously, when he was 6 years old, my mother looked out the front window and saw this kid climbing the tiny little fruit tree in our front yard. My mother went out and told him not to climb it anymore, advising him that it was just too dangerous and way too small to hold his weight. He could also end up accidentally damaging the tree. (Most importantly though, if he happened to fall and ended up breaking his neck, I'm sure his parents would NOT sit back and say "Oh, we're sorry Mrs. Sherman. It was his own fault. He should have listened. It's no problem. We'll take care of it, ourselves." No. Most likely, they'd sue us. Right?) Apparently, this kid held a grudge against my mother for that for ten long years. Things would disappear from our garage (including a set of 120-year-old Civil War era hand-made tools handed down to my brother by my grandfather). MY car, not my mother's, parked on the street out in front of the house, would suffer broken headlamps, broken parking lamps, broken windshields, the front and back wiper blades ripped from their place, broken external door handles, key- or knife-made scratches in the paint, slashed tires, and dents. Golf balls would hit the house at all hours of the day and night (as well as other houses, but not as often). We'd find trash and empty beer bottles in the back corner of our yard, where the fence meets their property. They would mostly end up being cans of rust remover, or whipped cream, spent lighters, etc. ..."Sniffing" stuff, if you think about it. Baseballs and footballs would "accidentally" hit the house far more often than could be considered "accidental." For ten years, we couldn't understand why this would happen. Nor did we know who was doing it (except for the trash in the backyard). We had suspicions. We'd call the police. The police would say "okay, who do we arrest? This kid was very popular at Gainesville High School. He was heavy into sports, there...a sports star of sorts. The coaches all loved him. Such a great kid was he, to them. He was a star on the baseball and football teams, He was into golfing. He was even on the Homecoming Court during Gainesville High's "StormWarning." Some 50 to 60 "friends" would visit him in their own vehicles, every week. Thier mother was a real estate salesperson of some form or another, and was never home, I noted. She was always away selling something, somewhere. The kids were always left at the house, unsupervised, for days. The neighbors loved him, too, for he was a well-liked and admired role-model friend of all the little kids on the block; and he often babysat for the parents. He'd play street football or street baseball with the kids. On occasion, he'd get the little kids involved in his mischief. But their parents never knew. He was careful about that. All the parents up the block thought he was such a special kid. So everybody loved him. How the hell do you fight that? Just a wonderful little "angel" was he in everyones' eyes. Meanwhile, things kept happening to us. He was mad at my mother, though; and yet, every time he tried to hurt her, he'd "miss the target", to quote Captain Kirk, and end up hurting ME, personally, somehow. I don't know if he realized this or not - I don't think he did; but even if he did, I really don't think he'd care. But, does this MATTER? Would this somehow LIGHTEN the offense if he didn't know? Then, he deliberately shot and killed my cat. Two years later, I heard him brag about it. To Continue... I reported the fact that I had the recording to the police, and they were ready to actually take some real action when the officer suggested I check on the laws regarding monitoring cordless phones. He thought he remembered that they might have recently changed, and he didn't want to start on something that could 1) get me in trouble and, 2) just end up dismissed if done improperly, anyway. I went to the law library and researched it and, sure enough, the law had changed since I last programmed those freqs into the scanner. Monitoring and divulging information heard on a cordless had been made illegal a little over a year earlier. Apparently, some Senators got caught with their pants down, so to speak, relatively recently, and went on to create legislation to prevent it from happening to them again. Nobody gives a damn if it affects just citizens; but when it hapepns to Senators, then they make a law. Go figure. [Sigh!] Anyway... Sorry. [grin] Everything was called off. Nothing was done about it. Actually, I COULD have said something officially, still, and caused something to happen on it. However, had I done that, I still would have faced charges of violating a federal law, the possibility of a hefty fine I couldn't afford, and perhaps some jail time. BUT, the law could have acted on it, yet. I had to weigh that. And I did. I almost went for it. But I decided finally that it wouldn't be smart. So, I accidentally come upon proof this kid had committed an act of animal cruelty by shooting and killing my pet for fun, and I can't use it. To make things worse, our local Humane Society just had its budget cut and the animal abuse investigation section was recently abolished completely. It is no more. Somebody kills my cat, I find out; and by reporting it, *I* break the law. What's wrong here? Closure? There IS none. ...There is none. I'm really just at a loss to understand why people do those kinds of things to other people's pets. Cats aren't pets. They're just stuffed toys to gut out and hang from trees. They're target practice. They're sacrifical offerings. Dogs don't get it nearly as bad as cats do. People love dogs. God help you if you harm one of them. What's wrong with Society today? Now...to find out Bran's with God. Nothing left for us to bury. No closure. It makes me so sad, so angry. So, Bran's remains rotted away in some unknown trash dump, somewhere...in amongst God knows what kinds of other rotting, biohazardous, discarded filth. No chance for a memorial in the back yard. She was not buried close to home. She was not buried close to us. She was "buried," but in such a highly disgusting, disgraceful, and dishonorable way. Bran did not deserve that kind of treatment. That one thought alone is so horrible, to me. And I have no clue where her body is, now. That is how my cat - something I loved very much - was treated by someone else's kid. You know what? To hell with it. Screw it. His name was John Kolachi. (Not sure of the spelling.) His best friend, heard laughing in the background during the phone conversation, was Mike Jones. If you're in the armed services and you happen to know this kid, then avoid him at all costs if you want to stay out of trouble. He's bad news, and scary. Stay away from him. If his mother is reading this, you COULD report this. But, I'd think twice before you do. You see, I've got you caught in a Catch-22. It would not be good for you to say anything, would it? I mean, think about it. To report it, you must make news of it - make it PUBLIC. More so than this little web page does. But to make my little "infraction" known, you must make ALL of your story known, too. And I know yer the type who doesn't want that. Yer too concerned with your own public image being ruined to get involved with this. But, even if you had the balls, good luck trying to convince the public that you and your son were wronged, here. In fact, you risk hatred by many, rather than any sympathy. Screwed yourself, didn't you? There. My revenge is served now. I can't say anything because your son lucked out with what is called a "technicality;" but yet, neither can you say anything. So there you have it. Go home and have a happy day, missy. Go home and think about all those times you said to your son, "NOT NOW, DAMMIT!!! THIS SALE IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!! NOW SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" Go home and think about all those times we tried to talk to you about your son, and all those times you cursed at us and flipped us a "bird," instead, and then slammed the door in our faces. We TRIED. ...NUMEROUS times. You ignored us. You reap what you sow, lady. You reap what you sow. Afterthoughts Now...to the rest of you reading this, what just happened to me, above? You may be thinking to yourself, "GOOD going, young man! Serves them RIGHT! They DESERVE it! And you had a RIGHT!..." Perhaps. Perhaps not. I don't know. BUT, I add the following warning ... about something which I am not unmindful of, too, in all of this... Like the quote in the introduction says: "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster...when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you..." You have NO IDEA how true that is... I made the Intro page to this one dark and ominous on purpose, with good reason. I want you to SEE what has happened to me as a result of all this, so that it (hopefully) will not happen to someone else. I wanted it to sink in...deeply; and I think that facepage does it quite nicely, at that. Until you experience it yourself, you'll never have a CLUE what happens to you. The police cannot be called upon to help. You're on your own. You become paranoid endlessly. You become obsessed with finding out who is doing this to you. Expensive destruction is occuring all around you and, if you do nothing, it will only continue; so you are forced into handling it on your own - even though you know it's bad and what it can do you if you're not careful. But you have no choice. You're forced into it. You set up a video camera (or video cameras) - which were not meant for surveillance - and point it out the window. You purchase floodlights to illuminate your property at night and to scare off intruders, and end up ruining the nighttime neighborhood with bright lights constantly shining in your neighbor's windows. Then they hate you, too. You hook your vidcam up to your VCR and run both of them twenty-four hours a day - even though they were not meant for 24-hour, 7-day-a-week operation. Hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars worth of equipment is rendered broken in a few months time, rather than a few years time, because of the excessive operating. Hundreds are spent on blank video tapes. You set your alarm clock in the middle of the night so that you can replace the tape before it runs out at 3am. You spend uncountable hours of your free time going back over the day's tapes on yet ANOTHER spare VCR, trying to catch something suspicious. Three tapes a day, at 8 hours each. YOU try going through that day in and day out. You lose so much sleep. You are constantly irritated. You are impatient. You become suspicious of everyone and everything. Every noise might be an intruder. You try to talk to your neighbors, but they don't seem to care; and they never seem to know anything. You throw forth the idea of a Neighborhood CrimeWatch. "That's a GREAT idea! But...join? No, I don't want to do that. Thanks for offering, though." You hear them whisper on your way out. They are useless. Soon, you start suspect them, too. Do they know? How MUCH do they know? How LONG have they known? Why haven't they ever said anything to us? Why won't they help? Are they just too afraid to help you for fear of retribution on themselves, or something? You can't talk about it to anyone else, either, because you're afraid people will think you an obsessed nut...and really, you are, even though it's not a situation of mental illness, but necessity. And you know how people are. Instead of sympathising, they'd rather ask themselves why this kid is doing what he's doing. You must have done something especially grievous to that so-nice boy for him to turn on you like that. What did YOU do to him? You probably deserve it. That's how most people think. So you learn to keep it to yourself after a while, and never say another word about it. It's just not worth it. This goes on for years, until you obtain some proof-positive that cannot be discounted in any way. Only THEN will the police act. Meanwhile, it's too late. Your life has been ruined and turned upside-down, and you've wasted a lot of money on something that was so needless. In the end, you've become paranoid of everybody, you trust noone, and you've developed an almost obsessive compulsive disorder about protecting your pets and property, and you are never the same again. That people can do these kinds of things to others I think stinks SADLY. And I blame the parents. They just want the kids because they think they're supposed to have them or something these days, maybe as a symbol of status or something. Who knows. They certainly don't seem to care about them much today. But they just "HAVE" to have them, whether they're ready to handle them or not! Meanwhile, these "neglected" kids -- with parents who never cared about them, who slept on the couch all day, who yelled at them to stay out of the way because they were "busy," or who beat them, or who mentally, emotionally, or sexually abused them -- are in our high schools, and on the streets joining gangs. Without any morals having been taught them or to fall back on, they're shooting our sons, and our daughters, and our neices, and our nephews, and in so doing, they're teaching the kids around them that it must be okay to do things like this. They pick on other kids, and berate and embarrass them in front of their peers. Then THOSE kids go on to become just like them. Our society just seems to be getting worse and worse and; our parents, and society, just turns a blind eye on it all. Naw, it doesn't exist. If you're a parent, you're reading this right now and you're personally offended, aren't you? "How DARE this person come and blame ME?" Guess what? Stop being offended and start listening, instead. Grow up. Take your pride and throw it out the window, please. That's the bottom line reason why all this is so...because you're too busy being offended and giving your neighbor the bird rather than sitting down humbly with them and contemplating the real possibility that your child MIGHT have done something wrong, and talking with your child about it. If that's how you look at this - in offense rather than as a group thing, here - then leave this planet, please. The rest of us would like to continue our lives without the worry over the possible repercussions of your personal and moral ignorance. On the other hand, if you're listening, and you find out that your child did something wrong, don't beat them. (Spanking is a little different than beating, that's not what I mean, here.) Instead, sit them down, make them feel bad about what they did first, show them why its wrong, and then go in and try to teach them some morals. And give them all the available time you can scratch together afterwards. That's part of being a parent. Comes with the job. You wanted this. DEAL with it. No whining, either. This "lost time in (your) life" as you see it should have been a thing expected long before you decided to have the child. Too many of you think that having a child means you're going to get to have a real, live, cute and fuzzy "teddy bear" to show around and brag about, and that life with it is going to be so cheery and colorful and wonderful and easy. Rainbows! Doves! Blue skies! Down floating through the air! (SLAP!) GET REAL! WILL YUH! If you really think that, then please stop by my house and I'll shoot you in the head for you. Okay? UNLESS we can all start acting like caring and responsible parents, then more and more of our kids will then go on to become just like this. And the world will just get worse; not better. Take a look at MTV now and then and see what marketers consider "attractive advertising" for today's kids. After you do that, do me a favor...turn the damned TV off, and KEEP it off. Will yuh? This is the WRONG reinforcement for your kids. But that's another story, entirely. I Don't Trust People Around My Pets Anymore I don't trust other people around my pets anymore. I've given them far too many chances around my living things already, and have lost far too many pets, now. Let's see now; why is that? In my lifetime, the score would now be about 4 deliberately killed by people, and 1 stolen: Three cats (two of them look-alike replacements of the first) deliberately run over by an old lady who lived down the street from us when we were living in Silver Springs Shores when I was 10 years old -- for no other reason than because she hated cats and only liked dogs; One pet stolen when a nearby apartment dweller at Covered Bridge Apartments moved one day and decided she wanted to take my cat that she so-much liked, when I was 12; And recently one cat deliberately and maliciously shot and killed with a pellet gun -- by a teenage jerk who has and gets everything he ever wanted and is very popular in school and thinks he can get away with anything he wants -- for no other reason than because my mother told him when he was six not to climb up in our tree -- because he couldn't get his way. Nice guy, eh? He really deserves all the wonderful things that happen to him in his life, doesn't he?; So, all I have left in a web page to talk about Bran is what memories I have of her once short existence and a story of some bastard delinquent juvenile who has everyone fooled about him and about how he killed my pet. Wanna hear something else? He apparently went on not long after this ... to West Point. THIS is what we have protecting us in the Armed Services. I wish I could understand it. This animal, that I cared so much for... She was so harmless and innocent. Not shy to offer the gentle lick of her kiss, or to share her time and attention with you. She trusted people. Now, she won't be sleeping next to me on my bed anymore. I can't play with her in the back yard anymore. I can't hold her anymore. Muffin lost a kitten. Raisen lost a sister. She's gone forever. I can't bring her back again. All I have now for memories are tears because of one mental, sadistic, spoiled brat. Like I said...The world really is going to pot quickly these days. Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. And it won't stop until we start acting like proper parents and role models ... and like civilized examples to each other.
About `Bran' Todd L. Sherman/KB4MHH Gainesville, Alachua Co., Fla. E-mail: afn09444@afn.org Created: September 24, 1995. Last updated: August 29, 1999, March 28, 2002, January 17, 2003. © Copyright 1995-2003 by Todd L. Sherman. All Rights Reserved.

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