No More Cats, Please!
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About this ebook
With warmth, humor and plenty of photos, Warren Philipson recalls his 70 years with pets. Although the stories are of his and his family’s dogs, fish, turtles, gerbils, a parakeet, a horned lizard and even salamanders, cats have dominated his last quarter century. Of those, you’ll meet cerebral Lassie, disappearing Rex, and Boss, the speedy cat of lesser intelligence. And you’ll spend time with his son’s displaced cat Henry, who, among other achievements, sends Boss into protective custody and so intimidates a pet sitter with 20 years’ experience, she is unable to enter the house. Are Warren’s pet caregiver days over as he plans? Maybe not, considering what his wife is keeping in the garage.
Warren Philipson
Warren retired following two rewarding careers. After being tethered to Cornell University for 30 years, including time as a student, he resigned as a professor and spent the next 20 years as a scientist with the federal government. After retiring he began a blog, Retired--Now What?, writing about growing up, travel, exercise, pets and more. Increasingly, he's shifted toward new research of interest. If you glance at the list of “Blog Post Topics,” you’ll get an idea of the scope to date.
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No More Cats, Please! - Warren Philipson
No More Cats, Please!
by
Warren R. Philipson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2016 by Warren R. Philipson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in book review.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE and COPYRIGHT
PREFACE
PART 1 Life Before Cats
1: It Began with a Dog
2: Sampling the Animal Kingdom
3: Dogs Revisited
PART 2 The Cats Cometh
4: One, Two, Three
5: Life with Lassie, Rex and Boss
6: Godzilla and Other Fish
PART 3 Hosting Henry
7: Henry (the Cat)
8: Henry and Boss
9: Henry and Me
EPILOGUE
Feline Follow-up
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
APPENDIX: Pet Research
PREFACE
I hope you’ll forgive me. I’m old, retired, reasonably fit, rarely crotchety and not about to take care of another pet, especially a cat.
I love animals, well, most. As this account of my life with pets describes, I’ve had or lived with examples of every class of vertebrate, even amphibian, though I suppose the salamanders were hardly pets. I only kept them a day or two.
Most recently, because I am both the early riser and the one who handles cleaning duties in our household, in addition to having an overabundance of animal empathy, I have been the cat keeper--in sickness and in health, until death do they part. In this capacity, I responded to from one to three cats nearly every day for 20 years.
Before you proceed (and I hope you will), I want you to feel confident that what I’ve written is true to the best of my recollection. Pet owners know there’s rarely a need for embellishment or exaggeration when discussing one’s pet or pets--You won’t believe what (pet name) did yesterday!
The book evolved from a handful of the 500 posts that appeared on a blog I wrote after retiring as a senior scientist with the federal government. I pulled together the selected posts, filled in lots of detail and added cement. You’ll also find an appendix whose content goes beyond my life with pets. Since many of the blog posts reviewed academic research, including studies of animals and pets, I’ve summarized several pet research posts, chancing that you’ll find them of interest and that the research hasn’t been completely superseded by more recent work.
Most important, I hope you enjoy the book.
PART 1
Life Before Cats
Beag and Sydney resting between rounds. (Photo courtesy of Rachel)
1: It Began with a Dog
Lassie
My life with pets began in the 1940s, when I was 4 or 5 years old. Lassie was a mostly border collie, and though I had an older brother, my parents were the chief pet caretakers.
Lassie between the author (right) and his big brother.
I don’t remember much about Lassie