Pet Sounds
Hey there Rockabyers! I'm Rockabye Grrl and, like Ms. Rockabye, I'm a part of the Rockabye Baby family. I'm excited to bring you a little bit of pop culture, mixed with some nostalgia, and a dash of music, of course! And I'm kicking off my first post with the story of my first pet!
My house was often referred to as "The Zoo." We had a lot of pets running around when I was growing up: cats, dogs, and even two frogs named Ren & Stimpy.
But the first pet we got that was mine was an Abyssinian named Pyramus. Pyramus was named after a character from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (my parents are an actor and a director, respectively) and he was a perfect shade of grey. Grey Abyssinians are somewhat rare and that made him feel special to me. Pyramus was a wily feline and we would usually wake up to find him climbing on some tall and hard to reach place. One time he jumped directly on my head after we returned from a long vacation. The vet said that it was common for cats to be upset about their owners leaving for long periods of time, but hadn't heard of that particular reaction before. I remarked that since it was my head he jumped on, he must have missed me the most.
Pets bring us so much joy and laughter, but the hardest part is knowing that they will leave us one day. Pyramus's reckless spirit eventually caught up with him one afternoon when a car going much too fast down our street hit him. My parents were distraught and avoided telling me for a comically long time (3 days!), worried I would be devastated. I remember the evening well: I was in my room, dancing around while listening to New Kids on the Block, when my parents walked in.
"Sweetpea," they said softly, "we need to talk. Can you turn the music off?"
I pressed stop on my cassette player and took off the plastic top hat I was wearing. We sat in a circle on my floor and my mom told me that she had some sad news: Pyramus had been hit by a car outside the house and he didn't make it. I started to cry, a knot forming in my throat. Mom and Dad both expressed their sadness and explained how death was a part of life, etc. But all the while in my head, I started to think about my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon and how whenever he or Wiley Coyote or Daffy Duck would get run over, they would get completely flattened and then blow themselves back up with their thumb. A weird, but commonplace event in cartoons. I knew it seemed silly, but I just had to know. I swallowed the knot in my throat, wiped my nose on my sleeve, and looked my parents seriously in the eye.
"Is he flat?" I asked.
My mom remembers grabbing my dad's hand, both of them trying not to laugh. Even though we had Pyramus for just a few years, his cat legacy lives on in the stories we continue to tell about him.
Need some music to tame the baby animals in your zoo? Try some of my favorite Rockabye Baby releases:
But the first pet we got that was mine was an Abyssinian named Pyramus. Pyramus was named after a character from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (my parents are an actor and a director, respectively) and he was a perfect shade of grey. Grey Abyssinians are somewhat rare and that made him feel special to me. Pyramus was a wily feline and we would usually wake up to find him climbing on some tall and hard to reach place. One time he jumped directly on my head after we returned from a long vacation. The vet said that it was common for cats to be upset about their owners leaving for long periods of time, but hadn't heard of that particular reaction before. I remarked that since it was my head he jumped on, he must have missed me the most.
Pets bring us so much joy and laughter, but the hardest part is knowing that they will leave us one day. Pyramus's reckless spirit eventually caught up with him one afternoon when a car going much too fast down our street hit him. My parents were distraught and avoided telling me for a comically long time (3 days!), worried I would be devastated. I remember the evening well: I was in my room, dancing around while listening to New Kids on the Block, when my parents walked in.
"Sweetpea," they said softly, "we need to talk. Can you turn the music off?"
I pressed stop on my cassette player and took off the plastic top hat I was wearing. We sat in a circle on my floor and my mom told me that she had some sad news: Pyramus had been hit by a car outside the house and he didn't make it. I started to cry, a knot forming in my throat. Mom and Dad both expressed their sadness and explained how death was a part of life, etc. But all the while in my head, I started to think about my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon and how whenever he or Wiley Coyote or Daffy Duck would get run over, they would get completely flattened and then blow themselves back up with their thumb. A weird, but commonplace event in cartoons. I knew it seemed silly, but I just had to know. I swallowed the knot in my throat, wiped my nose on my sleeve, and looked my parents seriously in the eye.
"Is he flat?" I asked.
My mom remembers grabbing my dad's hand, both of them trying not to laugh. Even though we had Pyramus for just a few years, his cat legacy lives on in the stories we continue to tell about him.
Need some music to tame the baby animals in your zoo? Try some of my favorite Rockabye Baby releases:
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