At the end of 2021, the epidemic in Xi'an was sealed at home, and the pets at home had no food, so I remembered the pets I had when I was a child.
I was a post-70s, and when I was a child, it was around the 1980s, when our family lived in Nanqiao Zikou, and there was a small courtyard in the family, and the whole family lived together. My grandmother had several cats, and every day someone in the family had to go to Damai City Street to buy mixed liver or lungs for the cats, and then mix them with boiled water soaked leftover buns, which was the cat's favorite delicacy.
I always remember my grandmother wearing an aqua blue shirt in the afternoon sun, a dark blue vest overneath, and a large basket on her legs filled with needles and threads, cloth heads, and half-cut soles. She worked in flower glasses and looked at the cat lying next to her feet from time to time. When I was a child, my cotton shoes were made by my grandmother until I graduated from elementary school. Sometimes Grandma would catch the cat, tugging at the sun, tugging at the clump of hair, squeezing the flea on the cat's body, her silver hair shining in the sun.
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I never seemed to have much affection for cats and couldn't remember what I did to them. The scene after the old cat gave birth to the kitten is vividly remembered, and the cat cubs are crowded in a cardboard box, their eyes are afraid, and they meow non-stop. It may be that the old cat can't feed it, and Grandma feeds the kitten with milk in a small bottle of eye drops less than 2 centimeters in diameter and like a toy. The kittens that are born will often be given away, and the fifth uncle has also taken it to the literary road to sell, and if he sells it for money, he will come back and talk excitedly for a while. Grandma has been dead for 31 years, Nanqiao Zikou urban transformation, family demolition, small yard is gone, I don't remember how the cat was handled.
After junior high school, I went back to the southern suburbs to live with my parents, and the family's pets became dogs. Mainly raised by the mother. I've always found it very troublesome to have pets, to give them food and drink. My mom is a Ma li person, and caring for the dog is not a problem. The dog guy is annoyed, will tear all kinds of things in the house, often wake up, socks are thrown by the door, shoes are dragged into the kitchen. The mother will educate the dog like a child, and slowly it will be better. For various reasons, the family has several puppies, the name is Beanie, Hunter, McCall or something, the popular foreign TV series hero and heroine on this name, very handsome.
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At that time, there were no laws on dog keeping, and there was a building in the yard of the unit, everyone was familiar with each other, and the dog ran downstairs to walk himself, and generally did not go out of the gate. After making a meal and eating, I suddenly remembered that the stinky dog was still downstairs, my mother was shouting the dog's name at the kitchen window, and the neighbors would respond when they saw it: Yufang, go back, the dog is back. Before the words could be heard, the sound of the dog whirring and running upstairs was heard.
Although our hospital is small, after all, it is a family home of the unit, and there is a concierge at the door, and there is a special person to guard the door. Looking at it, the concierge has become everyone's chess and card room, just to set a table. Because people who play cards often smoke and snort melon seeds, everyone is dirty and generally unwilling to "support the stall" in their own homes. The old tables, chairs, and old sofas that no one wanted were put into the concierge room and filled with them. From morning to night, there is always a table with open cards. Playing small, fifty cents a piece, pure entertainment.
In the winter gatehouse, there is a large communal coal stove, and a chimney sticks out of the window, and on it sits a large pot of boiling water grunting and steaming. Children who return from school often have to open the heavy curtain to look at whether there are parents who play cards and see if there are their own parents inside. My mom played mahjong at the level of professor, and when she went, my dog was walking around the bike shed behind the concierge. Sometimes it guards the door of the gatehouse, and if there is no strange face outside, it will scream and act as a janitor. The advantage of the unit family home is that there is no secret, and the disadvantage is also this. There are good food and drink that cannot be hidden, spreading from their own windows and doors; the same is true for husband and wife quarreling and beating children, and the cries and scoldings are spread from the same channels. At that time, the doors and windows did not have the tight seams of today, and there seemed to be eyes behind the windows, and nothing could be hidden.
It is said that the lifespan of a dog is about 15 years, but our family has kept several, and none of them have died. Now, my mother has not kept dogs for many years, and the dogs have broken her heart. The dog called Doudou in the family is lost, I can't remember where it came from, I only remember the days when it was lost, my mother rode a bicycle, ran many streets around the house for several days, it can be described as lost and depressed. She told her neighbors that every time she came back from work, only the dog would stay at the door early to greet her, and as soon as the door opened, she would pounce on her, shake her head and tail, and warmly welcome her owner home. Beanie is not a good breed, think about it, my dog is not a precious breed, all are earth dogs stupid dogs, but this does not affect its relationship with its family.
In the late nineties, I had a dog named Hunter, and I was particularly impressed. When I came home after giving birth, my mother held the baby and put it on the bed, the dog was very unhappy, and kept screaming, in its mind, the person who pampered himself had a new pampering.
Hunter's departure was a tragedy. At that time, the family was still an old unit of the unit, and in order to prevent rats, my mother put a small handful of melon seeds stained with rat poison in the corner of the balcony, and the dog turned it over and ate it. When the disease was onset, my mother carried it to the hospital like crazy, and halfway to the road, the dog died. My mother came back in tears and took it in her arms, crying and saying that she had killed it. She carried the dog's corpse from the outside to the house, and then walked downstairs from the house, walked into the concierge, and when she saw people, she told the story of the incident and kept blaming herself. The whole family was shrouded in grief that day, and we were all worried that my mother would not be able to bear the blow, and at night my father led the digging of a pit in the small garden downstairs to bury the dog. Since then, my family has never had a pet again.
Furry kittens, puppies with personalities, who wouldn't like that? But love alone is not enough, there must be responsibility and ability to raise them. Over the years, I have always advised people not to keep pets, because I have deeply felt and seen the sadness of parting, and this sadness is so painful that it is enough to offset the joy they have brought to themselves.
A home without pets for more than twenty years ushered in a little love in the summer of 2021. Xiao Ai is a parrot, and her master is a big boy who wants to return to his hometown of Changsha after graduating from college. We met because of our business relationship, and we happened to see him in the circle of friends looking for a host for the parrot. I somehow got in touch with him, maybe that's fate. The day he sent Xiao Ai, it was very hot, Xiao Ai lived in a double-storey "villa" more than one meter high, cleaned very clean, and the original owner also brought her grain. That night, I ate skewers with the young man, knowing that he wanted to go to Beijing to develop, and immediately contacted several friends in Beijing, hoping to help him.
Not long after, Xiao Ai was sent back to my parents' house, and this time, it was my father who got busy. My mom said that I was looking for things for the family, and actually liked little love. Although she has a sharp mouth, Xiao Ai is not the kind of parrot that can talk, and if she provokes her, she will twist you with her mouth fiercely. My father sometimes let her stand on her fingers and spoke softly to her: "Little love, little love, I give you food and drink all day, clean you up, I love you so much, why don't you understand?" Then suddenly the painting style changed, and the channel changed to Shaanxi dialect: "You are so stuffy, you can't even say a word." ”
Little Love's villa is placed on the balcony, from the living room to the balcony, is a horizontal U-shaped route, every time she plays with her for a while, Dad will let her fly back by herself. There is a large dressing mirror in the corner, and when Xiao Ai first arrives home, she does not turn around in flight, and always hits the mirror with her head. After a while I went home, my father excitedly let Xiao Ai perform for me, Xiao Ai had already practiced it, and when he reached the corner, the flight speed did not decrease, and he smoothly drew an arc and arrived at his villa smoothly.
Dad has the back of his ears, he doesn't love hearing aids, and when others talk, he looks at people's lips and guesses. In recent years, his ears have become more and more deaf, and he does not like to go downstairs and communicate with others, because he is stupid because he can't hear others. In early December, my dad was hospitalized for coughing, and then he had surgery on his lungs and lived in the Second Affiliated Hospital for half a month. There are three or four tubes inserted in his body, and he has been thinking about little love. When the epidemic came, my father was discharged from the hospital on the 23rd and isolated at home with my mother and Xiao Ai. People have food and vegetables, the material is not rich, but not hungry, but the little love is out of grain.
She originally ate a mixture of 18 kinds of grains, and after eating during the epidemic, my mother fed her millet and corn, and she stubbornly did not eat it, only eating the apples that my father fed her. My dad sent a WeChat message to me helplessly and frustratedly: Imagine what it's like to eat two apples bigger than your head every day. The courier is not there, everywhere is closed, and I am also in a hurry. A few days ago, it was difficult to contact an old friend who had known him for thirty years to help, with bird food to send in, dad was very happy, said that people cheered birds, Xiao Ai could finally eat enough. I wanted to cry and laugh again, and I couldn't tell the taste in my heart.
I had everything to eat and drink in the field, and I didn't fight the epidemic with my family. Knowing the suffering of the family, the emotions are particularly rich, and the red circles of the eyes are red at every turn. This year's New Year's Eve because of the policy did not go home, in fact, the parents are older, or still want to reunite with their families, together for a good New Year.
Author | Wei Ying | Shaanxi people