Depressing Childhood Stories.

Thanks to a ‘book tag’ post on social media, where you have to share your favourite childhood reads with your pals, I’ve been forced to root out some of my old, dog-eared favourites.

Some of you might already know that I’m a bit of a retro-lass and I *do* tend to keep hold of items that were dear to me from the past (alright, alright, I’m a filthy, mucky hoarder. I admit it.) But never mind the dust-mites, this does mean that I happen to have some wonderful examples of the kind of stuff that my brother and I were force-fed from a very tender age. These seem to fall into several categories, so I thought that I’d do a series of blog posts, dedicated to these childhood-traumatising, reads.

The BadAss Pets

First off, the late 60s and early 70s seemed to have a trend, whereby impish and downright stupid pets prevailed. Sure, they might have been fun to read about – but these stories, I feel, were very much to blame for the fact that we never allowed a pet other than a goldfish and a budgie. The messy horrors of owning such psycho-companions, certainly seemed to discourage my mother from all things feline and / or fluffy.

Both my brother and I also enjoyed the poem, ‘The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat’. It was a rollicking read, given that the pair fought so hard that they actually ripped each other apart and then gobbled each other up in the end. Still, at least if pets did that in real life, it would have saved our mum from cleaning up any of their entrails, wouldn’t it?

As for Tiptoes – she was a bit of a cheeky little critter and the mother in the story had just had a baby, so she couldn’t cope with Tiptoes pulling down curtains and ripping up eiderdowns. Yes, this woman was a bit of a sap, if truth be told. She sat and wept buckets after the feather eiderdown explosion episode and convinced her husband that naughty wee Tiptoes had to go. But, in the end, it transpired that Tiptoes (the dirty little tartlet) had been having illicit sex! Sadly, we were not treated to the illustrations of this, which is a shame because it took me a few more years to figure how to all the widgets and gidgets fitted together. But yes … that little minx of a cat was soon found all curled up in the potting shed, with seven little ‘darling’ kittens of her own.

So, the Lady of the House, decided to keep Tiptoes after all – because now that the cat had become a mother herself, she would instantly become calmer, more mature and less of a silly eejit overnight. Yeah, right.

And anyway, did Tiptoes’ owner not consider that she would now have SEVEN kittens running amok in her house, ruining her soft furnishings and playing havoc with her household fabrics? Of course she didn’t. Silly mare.