But the cat was already dead. Not really, but yeah. See, in my random caribbean island of birth there exists no such thing as spaying or neutering pets. For that matter, pet food is nonexistent and vets are only there to provide forms when someone wants to take an animal out of the country. So most people's forms of pet natality control is laying out a bunch of traps and killing them. Mean, sad, but true. And the butcher on the corner was most interested in keeping the cat population in the neighborhood under control.

That said, one beautiful spring morning we woke up to a dead cat in our garden. We being curious kids with nothing else to do started poking and prodding the cat. You know, for fun. It was a beautiful orange sherbet tabby and it's eyes were wide open and staring off into space. Or so I thought. Apparently the cat must've been only paralyzed because it started to stare at me. No one else saw it, but it kept on looking at me and freaking the heck out of me. Not sure what happened to the carcass of the cat. I'm sure that it eventually died off and was stuck in a garbage bag by one of the adults and then thrown in the trash.

I don't know if you've ever held a baby chick, but they're such fragile animals that they will practically die on you if you sneeze. Why do I tell you this? Because when I was around two and my sister around four, we were given a dozen baby chicks as pets. Needless to say, they died. The way they died is today's topic.

**I do warn you that death is described in a cold hearted manner. As you read this remember that I did this as a toddler and that any responsibility for their death, if any, should be given to the dummies that decided chicks would make a perfect gift for a toddler.**

I can only remember the deaths of a few of them since I was so young, but I've been told by the adults that the rest of them met similar fates. One of them simply would.not.eat. I tried feeding it. I remember my hand around the chick's body pushing it into it's feed bowl trying to make it eat. Not sure exactly how it died, but it must've either choked or been choked by me. Another one would not drink it's water. That one I believe drowned in my attempt to make it do that cute little pick up the water and lift the head up maneuver that they do. Another one of them was playing horsie with me (or the other way around, I don't want to be too graphic). The last chickie, I vaguely remember grabbing it's little leg and swinging it round and round in a wide circle. I seem to remember that I wanted it to know what a merry go round felt like. I must have dropped it at some point or hit a wall with it, because I distinctly remember that I had just a chicken leg in my hand. The darn thing just wasn't made like they used to. Thankfully I didn't go on to continue aiding on the demise of chickens everywhere when I got older. I do believe that my actions scarred/traumatized the adults in my family because no matter how hard I begged, they never bought me a baby chicken again. Not even when I was 10 and the lady had several dozen of them spray painted with easter and neon colors. And I so wanted that neon purple chick too.

Katie, if you tell the internets anything else regarding this, I shall spray you with something. I don't know what, but I promise it will be sticky and hard to clean.

I do have to mention that I'm a much better pet owner now that I have the full use of my faculties, and that my hand eye coordination is much better.

So, wondering how the rest of the fish died?

Well we had this girl that watched my sister and I after we came home from skool. She also had to do some cleaning and cooking for us until our parents got home later that day. Well, once she mopped the floor and we didn't think anything off it until later that evening when she was gone that we went to play with the fish. The fish were all dead. Turns out that she put the mop water in the tank "thinking" that it was just a dump tank and not thinking that fish lived in it........I don't think I saw her after that.

I used to have pets. lots of them. Lets see, there was a dozen baby chicks, two turtles, two baby crabs (the edible kind, not the nasty kind; katie get your mind out of the gutter), a gazillion fish, three or four dogs, a chicken, two cats. And all of them met untimely deaths (with the exception of the dogs which were given away).

Today, I'll talk about the turtles and fish. See, we had two green turtles my sister and I. And they looked so very lonely and unhappy. The fish on the other hand, looked so very happy swimming away in their tank. We had so many fish that they were in a 25 gallon tank and you could stick your hand in there and randomly grab a couple of fish without even trying. It was fun, slimy but fun. So my sister and I decided that we'd do little overnight trips for the turtles so that the fish could tell them how fun life was.

We didn't know that turtles ate fish. Of course we noticed how the next day the turtles didn't seem to like it when we took them out of the tank. And of course we noticed that some fish were half eaten. But somehow we never quite put two and two together. I have no idea what happened to my sister's turtle. My turtle on the other hand met its maker one sunny weekend that my cousin came to visit. You see, he wanted to play with the turtle but he was a bit rough. So rough in fact that he ended up poking the turtle's eye out. As you can imagine, the eyeless turtle bit the naughty boy quite hard. The boy threw the turtle out the window never to be seen again. Did I mention that we lived in a two story building?

The fish didn't all die thanks to our turtles but that's a tale for another day.