Creepy Crawly Warning

[lbaker]

A friend of my mothers was always nervous about visiting our home because she said our Siamese cat would stare at her and "turn his eyes red" at her Actually the cat would stare at her. I think he did it for fun, he ignored other visitors

[Karen]

My beloved Aunt Dotty - my mother's best friend since childhood, not technically an aunt - was afraid of cats. Not "run fom the room screaming"-type afraid, but afraid and nervous and uncomfortable whenever one was around. I finally asked her about it when I was an adult.

She told me, "I know it is silly, and I know they are harmless and most people love them. But when I was a very little girl, my older brothers would grab a kitten from the barn and hold it toward me and chase me. The kitten would invariably be terrified, meowing and claws out in fear, but my brothers made it seems they were viscious monsters out to get me. I was terrified myself, and would run away screaming, and they'd run after me until they were laughing too hard to chase me any more. I know now that they were just stupid kids, and that it was as scary for the kittens as it was for me, but I just get the creeps whenever I see a cat."

She and I agreed that her brothers were stupid, in fact she still didn't like them very much as they didn't improve a whole lot as adults, and it was unfortunate they had ruined a whole species for her. But she always had her dog, and she and dogs got along fine.