part0037

I always say, “Never trust a dead-cat story.” That principle applies to suffering-pet stories in general and to small-pet nabbings in particular.

Tales abound about small pets getting grabbed and devoured by carnivorous creatures. A few of them are undoubtedly true, and they contribute a kernel of believability to the genre. For instance, the resurgence of the now-protected alligator population in Florida is said to have led to the demise of a number of small domestic animals. That seems plausible.

But so many other variations of these stories appear so often and in so many alleged settings, that even if they are true, the stories that are told must be many times removed from their original sources.

Betsy James, an illustrator in Albuquerque, New Mexico, sent me a story in this genre that she heard from a friend in Santa Fe. It supposedly happened to a friend of a friend of her friend. In Ms. James’s own words: “A well-to-do New York designer, unmarried, has a cat that is everything to him. The cat is getting old and stiff and asthmatic, and the designer decides that it would be better for kitty if he moved out west to a high, dry climate, where the cat could spend its declining years in comfort .

“After much research, he buys a quarter-of-a-million-dollar custom adobe in the sagebrush hills east of Santa Fe, loads up the cat to travel, and arrives in town.

“The first afternoon in his new home, he puts the cat gently out on the back patio to wander around in the sagebrush and inspect its new quarters. A few minutes later, he looks out the sliding doors just in time to see an enormous owl come sailing in. The owl picks up the cat in its claws and goes soaring off into the sunset.”

Before I could decide whether that story was true or not, folklorist Bill Scott of Australia supplied me with another variation, clipped from the Brisbane Courier Mail . As the paper reported it, a woman was walking her dog, a Chihuahua, on the beach in the costal town of Kalbarri, when a pelican landed and gobbled up the poor creature right on the spot.

Here in my home town of Salt Lake City, where two peregrine falcons nesting on a downtown hotel have attracted much attention, I’ve been trying to start a similar story about a visitor touring the Mormon Temple Square who has a pet parakeet riding around on his shoulder. Suddenly there’s a swoop of wings, and … no more birdy. Another small pet is carried off.

It could have happened, since the peregrines subsist on pigeons and other captured birds. But, so far, no pet parakeets are missing, and my contrived legend has not caught on.

There is yet another traditional nabbed-pet story, however, in which a dog is taken by its owner to Florida’s Marineland amusement park. The pampered pup, wearing a jeweled collar, is being held up on the railing by its owner to watch the show. Then, when the animal keepers toss some meat into the shark tank, the doggy leaps in after it. Guess who’s coming to dinner at the sharks’ house?

While many people treasure small, defenseless animals as pets, others regard them as ugly, obnoxious, and useless. It’s possible that the toy-poodle-haters are the ones who tell these stories with the greatest glee. Maybe it’s their revenge for being yapped at daily by their neighbors’ pampered Fifi.