Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Petlife.
Second-Hand Cats
I was the first to walk into the hospital room, the first to see the rise of my mother's feet under the grey blanket that covered them. I didn't want to go any further into the room. I didn't want to see her lying there, pale and lifeless, as I had never seen her before. But my feet moved forward almost on their own, my sisters and my Dad following close behind. Her face came into view, and I saw her, tired and weary, her thin gray hair smoothed back no doubt by the hand of one of the nurses who probably loved her. This was a woman who would apologize for inconveniencing anyone while she was having a heart attack.
By Erin Gunsinger5 years ago in Petlife
Bootsie Chose Me
About three to four years ago, my then-husband had told me about something that kind of freaked him out from the night before. He had been outside smoking a cigarette and he noticed a few of the neighbors looking into the local community dumpster bin with a flashlight. He thought maybe they had thrown something in there and were trying to locate it before the city came to empty it the following morning. He said they had been looking for about ten minutes before, I'm assuming, they gave up. So, of course, this peaked his curiosity and he waited until they had gone back inside their house. He started to walk towards the dumpster and all of a sudden he said he heard a faint cry. He said it sounded like a kitten crying for his momma. So, he went back to the house and got his flashlight and went back to the dumpster. He said he heard the kitten cry a few more times, but he could not seem to pinpoint where it was coming from. So, like the neighbors, he gave up and went back inside.
By Vanna Vorbach5 years ago in Petlife
Love And Sorrow
I was never going to have a cat. There’s nothing wrong with cats, but with my allergies, living with a cat didn’t seem possible. Then, in the spring of 2020, a stray cat had kittens in my scrap wood pile. I thought it would be handy having a few cats around the property, so I cut a cat door in the wall of my shop and started putting food and water inside, to encourage her to move her kittens in and stick around.
By Beau Harmon5 years ago in Petlife
Jay
I first saw "dipstick", as they called him, running full blast with no care, a chip on his shoulder, and enough confidence that made me even question if I was looking at a dog and not a college boy. What sold me on him was his attitude to small children, because my grandmother had all of us grandkids at her house all the time it was a must he was good with children. I had been on the look at shelters for a while, I had lost my previous dog to a FedEx truck. I was looking for that connection I had before, and normal shelter dogs weren't working. Even though he was not being fed well, he was infested with ticks, and these people did not want him he still had spirit. This was also a situation that I felt if I did not take him home with me, he would die. He would ultimately meet the same fate as his mother before him, with a bullet to the head.
By Kaysha Mock5 years ago in Petlife
Vicki and Ani
The vastness of the lonely long road ahead of me, that one teacher that disapproved of my homework and announced it to the class as a lesson of what not to do, and shaky hands did not help my anxiety on my way to the first day of third grade. First day of school in Armenia felt like a whole new challenge, my cold grey desk awaited me as did the same students from last year who did not use to choose me for group activities. My grandmother walked with me every day, everyone in our neighborhood knew each other and I got to see the other neighborhood kids walking to school with similarly anxious face expressions. Just the day before, we had been playing tag, building random structures with sticks and stones, and anything else we would think of on the spot. One of the older kids used to walk me up to my apartment on the fourth floor where my grandmother would stand at the doorway shaking her head because I had yet again disobeyed her order to get home early, and by then it was dark and scary for me to walk up the flight of stairs alone.
By Tamara Tatevosian-Geller5 years ago in Petlife
