It was probably more grown-up in his mind to transfer the unpleasant emotion by way of blame to the child rather than to admit he cared for the cat. Likely had something nasty happen in his own childhood involving being punished for caring too much about animals, particularly if he were a farmer. Sorry his pain lapped onto your childhood. And sorry about the cat.
Was actually a woman, but...I think there was a lot of near-child-level care on the animal, yeah.
Didn't end up doing damage-- upset me, sure, but that was ages ago, and probably made me stronger in the long run. (Can still picture the beautiful marmalade-creme animal, though--what a LOVELY animal! Kind of like the one in my icon, but the picture the orange mixed half and half with creme.)
Mostly amazed that it suddenly bubbled to the top of my mind for no good reason.
*random story alert* When my mom was a little girl, her cat had kittens. The barn burnt down. The cat ran in to save them and failed. She STILL insists she hates cats...and it took me until I was at least in double digits before I understood that she was using a displacement approach-- if you "don't care" you can't be hurt. (Didn't stop her from saving every orphan animal that crossed her path, but hey, never said I was BRIGHT....)
It can be hard to think of our elders as sensitive humans sometimes, especially when their way of acting childish seems to be so very mature. Besides, we're supposed to respect them. But we also need to love them and in order to really do that we need to understand them, but this is too much to expect of a young child.
Comments 4
Likely had something nasty happen in his own childhood involving being punished for caring too much about animals, particularly if he were a farmer. Sorry his pain lapped onto your childhood.
And sorry about the cat.
Reply
Didn't end up doing damage-- upset me, sure, but that was ages ago, and probably made me stronger in the long run. (Can still picture the beautiful marmalade-creme animal, though--what a LOVELY animal! Kind of like the one in my icon, but the picture the orange mixed half and half with creme.)
Mostly amazed that it suddenly bubbled to the top of my mind for no good reason.
*random story alert*
When my mom was a little girl, her cat had kittens. The barn burnt down. The cat ran in to save them and failed.
She STILL insists she hates cats...and it took me until I was at least in double digits before I understood that she was using a displacement approach-- if you "don't care" you can't be hurt. (Didn't stop her from saving every orphan animal that crossed her path, but hey, never said I was BRIGHT....)
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment