want me to press the one button
i'm ready whenever you are
okay sir
Jack do you have any pets
Jim
Jim i'm sorry about that do you have any pets
no no i do not i uh i live in an apartment
okay well that would kind of preclude having a pet
well
well not really most of my neighbors
hum
have pets dogs
uh-huh
of course
well we've got we've got a cat and this is a very very special cat because uh we lived in the Philippines for thirty months we worked for TI in in Biejo City
in the Philippines and uh as you know uh the Filipinos are quite poor
and and uh they don't uh generally they eat their pets
uh well not generally but dogs they do uh so having a pet uh is is a luxury most of them don't have and we uh were able to find one that was born in a store
and the uh a Filipino lady that ran the store was giving them away and we took him home with us when he was uh about three weeks old
and uh ultimately my family moved back to Dallas and i had to stay on in the Philippines ten months after they went back
and uh eventually i shipped him home by air and you know you have to really love a pet to spend two hundred and forty dollars to ship him across the ocean
i agree and how they you know the uh
the uh health officials let him in the country
yeah there was no problem because there was a veterinarian in our neighborhood and we had all the proper paperwork and and i shipped him uh uh by air
and uh let my family know when he was going to be in and they went out to the freight claiming area out at uh DFW airport and claimed him
it was it was it was it was pretty interesting uh did you have any pets when you were growing up
i always had pets when i grew up
oh okay what did you have
oh i had uh i started with a
cat
um-hum
uh an old you know alley cat an old Tom but i had dogs primarily and uh
um-hum
um-hum
mostly purebreds
oh yeah
but uh
we had a large yard
yeah
and uh we did not have the pets in the house
uh they all they were always outdoors
yeah they they they lived outdoors and you know
but i had a cat i have a i had a cat uh
uh when i was living in in uh Pensacola Florida uh we had a uh cat that
i got from again from a friend it was born in a barn
uh it was they had a a small farm so there were lots of cats around
um-hum
so i picked out one and got it for my daughter and uh had it uh spayed and
declawed
and we did keep it in the house
restricted to the uh first floor
oh yeah
and it was uh not a bad experience but for the most part i'm i'm reluctant to have animals in the house i just i just don't do not feel that
particularly dogs uh i do not feel that they
fare well
yeah they're they're
uh in the in the house
and it's amazing how they how they adapt to the outside i was raised in New England and we had an Eskimo Spitz
and he was never in the house a day in his life and i can you know i remember like this sounds like old grandfather stories but i can remember thirty five below zero and thirty inches of snow on the ground
um-hum well i yeah i had a malamute at one time
and
huh
and uh stayed outside
um-hum
i was raised in southern West Virginia
oh okay
so the winters would get fairly cold the only problem with it is that the bloody thing would
sit outside my window and bay at the moon at night and uh you know it's uh
wolf origins uh came to the fore particularly during the full moon and but i always had uh dogs i had a terrier
first and then i had a uh
let's see i had a terrier then i had a cocker spaniel
then a
then the uh malamute
and then the last dog i had was a uh basset hound
um-hum
but they all stayed outside
oh for goodness sakes yeah uh the only dog we ever had uh we lived prior to living in the Philippines with TI we lived in Malaysia
and we were told when we got there that it'd be good to get a dog because uh there were a lot of uh breaking and entering and robberies
um-hum
and the uh native Malays by religion are scared of dogs in fact the lick of a dog is supposed to be something very very bad something very evil
um-hum
so what happened uh was anybody that had a dog at least the native Malays made up fifty percent of the population if you had a dog uh you wouldn't get ripped off by a Malay
now the other fifty percent was part some Chinese some Indians and they might then they didn't have any qualms any qualms about dogs so we went down to the local SPCA
uh the American association in in Gautolompora uh actually had uh uh an SPCA there and we went down and picked us up a little old female mongrel and uh and brought her home and she made an excellent pet
um
uh except the only problem is we played badminton in the yard a lot and we used to have to get the little shovel and scoop and go clean the yard at night before we went and play badminton
right
but i'm i'm a runner by by hobby and she used to love to get outside the gate and i'd put her leash on and take her running with me
um-hum
and it was only years later i read that you shouldn't do it particularly in the tropical climates where we were and when she came back she'd drink about three panfuls of water
yeah i bet
but anyway it wasn't it wasn't in the heat of the day i'd always go running about seven o'clock in the evening or something like that but boy she was ready i'd get that leash and she'd come over and start jumping all over me to get ready to go
and and
well the you know the last one we had the the uh my uh
my father owned a plumbing and heating business and my brother and i
frequently worked for him during the summer when my brother was in college and i was in high school
and so uh this was the only dog that we trained to ride in the automobile
and so we used to take it to work with us when we would go on a job
pack it a lunch
and it would you know get out of the car and find a nice cool spot to rest and
my brother and i would go work and we'd come uh
break for lunch and and the uh
unpack the dog's lunch and so forth and the other workers the
the carpenters and so forth used to get just a hell of a charge out of it
because you know here are these two guys you know walked in with clean clothes you know every day my my of course my mother wouldn't let us leave the house without the clean clothes
oh yeah
you know with a dog and bringing a dog on the job an d they didn't realize we were working for my father so that uh
oh for goodness sake
it was uh but the people around here they're you know as i mention them the uh the neighbors a lot of the neighbors have uh
pets
um-hum
of course they you see them out walking every evening but they range you know the couple upstairs that uh above me uh has a long hair dachshund
right
uh the lady is German
but uh there are some huge dogs around here it's really phenomenal i cannot see i mean i've seen everything from
you know Great Danes and German Shepherds and just really huge animals and how they keep them confined
uh the the apartments are are fine they're relatively large but
i'm sure
to stay there all day is fantastic you know fantastic
well we we we live in a in a in a residential neighborhood and the animals pretty well run a lot of people have fences in their backyards and and dogs are kept inside fences uh cat cats are pretty well on the run
um-hum
fortunately people are responsible and they've all been spayed or neutered so we don't have gigantic litters of kittens running around here but they uh it's interesting the lady across from us has always taken in strays and she's got six or seven cats
and one of her cats somehow or other must have get into our house accidentally
uh when the door was open and found where our cat's food dish is and he likes our food a lot better than he likes hers and when i pull my car up in the evening i can hear him she leaves her garage door open most of them sleep in the garage at night
and no matter what time of night it is he hears my car stop and he's over here and he's forcing his head in the door when i open the door and i go in he goes in he gets a great big mouthful of food because he knows i'm going to pick him up right off and put him back out again and some days
he'll follow me up the front walk so i'll run around the back of the house and try to go in the back door and he'll he'll go around and beat me there so i've got so that now i fake him i make a move toward the back so he runs around the back then i go in the front door
so i i can i can get in without him but he's he's he's fat as a
it's amazing yeah it's amazing how they get conditioned it it really is
yeah he's he's he's
he's fat as a little pig and she took him to the vet and the vet said you got to stop feeding him so much or he's going to die of a heart attack and so she said to me you've got to stop feeding and i said i don't do it intentionally i and if i'm in the house
already sometimes i can keep him out if i'm trying to come in the house and he's trying to come in too i just kind of put my foot out uh against his neck while i'm i'm trying to uh get in the door and that works
but other times i'll forget that he's out there at the door and as soon as i open it to go out he's by me like a shot and by the time i can get him he's got a great big gigantic mouthful of food
well he might be canvassing the neighborhood you just might be the last stop on his uh on his route during the day
no i i think i i i think he he likes our food best uh somehow or another our cat has become a housecat
and he uh he sleeps with us he sleeps with my wife and i and either he sleeps across the foot of the bed on top of either my feet or her feet or above the covers
and uh except when it's extremely cold and we don't get many days like that here in Texas
