Boring Post for Saturday--Pets

There seems to be a tradition in our family about our pets.  It wasn't a tradition that I started, but I have observed it.  The identification of family pets seems to be illusive among the boy children of the family.  When my son was in kindergarten the thing that he most wanted to show for Show and Tell was his cat, the venerable Sugar Brains.  Sugar Brains was named loosely after Inspector Gadget's dog Brains.  At the vet I registered him as Sugar, feeling that they really didn't need to know his full name.  But, on the day I brought him in to kindergarten my son seemed a bit tongue tied.  I prompted him to tell some things about his cat.  I announced that his cat had an unusual name.  The teacher asked him to tell the class what his cat's name was.  I was holding the cat the got a tighter grip in case the ensuing laughter made him try to take a break for it.  My son proudly announced that his cat's name was Tiger.  Being a good mom, I did not correct him.  The teacher looked at me as if I were a little daft to announce that this was an unusual name for a tabby cat.  I never hit the comedy circuit with my son, he was not a reliable partner in comedy.

Recently, my son was told that his son, my grandson would be asked to tell the class about his pet.  Since my grandson is three, the warning was to prevent a student having no answer to the question about his pet.  My son and daughter in law prepped my grandson about the pet that the family owned.  They had a cat, an range tiger striped cat, a very similar cat to the long ago Sugar Brains.  That cat's name is Rocket.  He tolerates the grandchildren and has reached a point in his cat life where he is largely a moving stuffed animal.  But, grandson has a toy mouse that he has had from birth.  It is the Kohl's stuffed animal from "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."  Grandson sleeps with this mouse, feeds this mouse, uses this mouse as a comfort object.  He calls it Mousie.

So, as you can probably guess, on the paper that came home on the day they discussed their pets, my grandson proudly told the class that his pet was a mouse named Mousie and Mousie was brown.  I guess the teachers believed him.  It is not like he told them that he had a pet elephant. Pets, what are you going to do?

Side note--Sugar Brains went to live in Cincinnati and became an honorary Bengal mascot for a school and went by the name Beezer. Our next cat was named Tiger, the one after that Dodger and finally Rudy.  I wonder if my grandson will ever get a real pet mouse?