GiGi The Poodle

I’m going to save you some time and tell you the lesson of this story up front: explain things to children. In detail. Otherwise someone—or some poor innocent animal—is going to get hurt.

Now let me tell you why I know this.

Uncle Bobby was my Godfather. You always knew when he arrived because he talked loud, walked loud, and probably smelled loud too. He wasn’t exactly my favorite person, but he had a pool and gave me $100 savings bonds for Christmas, so seven-year-old me overlooked his personality flaws.

I feel like Uncle Bobby told me stories just because I was a kid and would believe mostly any story told to me with a lot of adjectives and excitement by an adult. Well, one day he told me the story of his cat. I forget its name but he was so enthusiastic about what this cat did, I was all ears. 

The cat, whose name I forget but description I did not, was big. A fat cat you could say. Uncle Bobby said he weighed about 17 pounds and was cranky too. “Cool,” I thought. “Are you giving me this fat cranky cat or what?”. I already had a dog, GiGi, so I figured a cat could complete the family and give my toy poodle a play buddy. 

But Uncle Bobby had different plans because he just wanted to tell me a story about his fat cranky cat, not give it to me. And the story goes as such: One day Uncle Bobby came home to find his cat sitting high upon the refrigerator. He screamed “Tabby (that’s what we’re going to call the cat) you get down from there right now!”. The cat jumped from the top of the refrigerator and landed on the ground peacefully. I was amazed! Wow animals can really jump from high places like that and land?!?! Uncle Bobby said “yup! Animals are amazing creatures.”

It was the weekend and we were at my grandmom’s house which was this spacious rancher my grandfather purchased after selling his bar at 52nd Market downtown. From the road the red brick ranch was enclosed by a red fence, a long walkway from the street to the house and then there was the front porch. I loved it. I spent a lot of time on the front porch playing with my Barbies or helping my grandmom snap green beans. On this day, I had neither my grandmom or my Barbies on the porch with me, but I did have GiGi … my new toy. Oddly enough I remembered what Uncle Bobby told me a few shorts months ago, ya know about how animals land on all four legs? In my seven-year-old brain, a cat and a dog were basically coworkers in the animal department.

So I threw GiGi down the steps to see if he would land on all fours … and PLOT TWIST ... he did not. He was launched off of the front porch, which only had 3 steps but from what I remember I really threw him up high. Like, how you throw a ball in the air? That’s how pint size Jonene threw her toy poodle down the steps. He broke his leg, was most likely traumatized for the rest of his life and as I sit here now trying to remember how I felt after it happened … I can’t. I remember my mom was, obviously, highly pissed off at me. 

I think I was just confused because Uncle Bobby said that animals land on all fours all the time. Remember the fat cat? Yeah, well since he was able to fly with the greatest of ease from the refrigerator to the floor, I figured GiGi would be ok to take flight from the front porch steps. As an adult—and now as a mother—I think about that story differently. Kids don't hear nuance. They hear instructions. Uncle Bobby didn't explain that cats have an incredible ability to catch themselves when they fall. He told me animals land on all fours.

So I believed him. Exactly as he said it.