Living with Other Kids

All my childhood I remember having the best cat.  She was a beautiful, sweet tempered Calico, with the most beautiful markings.  Not only was she a great cat, but she was very smart too.  She always brought us gifts from the fields and sometimes left them in our shoes.  Sometimes it would be a lizard, but most of the time it was a dead mouse.  She also got around with every other cat in the neighborhood.  My mom would call her a little promiscuous cat.  It sure seemed like she was always pregnant or tending to little ones.  One of her litters included a few orange striped kittens.  They were very cute, as are all kittens.

At this time one of my "Aunts" and her daughter and kids, that must have been single at this time, was living with us.  I never did call this daughter my cousins.  She was much older than I was and had some bratty little kids, with ratty looking hair, and bugger noses.

One of these bratty little kids, probably 3 years old, found some of my moms sharp Gingher scissors, and decided to cut off one of the baby kitten's tails.  We came home from somewhere and found a bloody stump at the bottom of one of these kitten's tails.  I don't recall her getting in trouble or scolded.  She was too small to say much.  But I do remember not liking her for it.  This was a start of a bad living situation.  What kind of a child goes and cuts a tail of an animal off.  Poor kitten.  I don't recall if it lived or died, I just remembering how could this little brat do such a thing.

Living with kids from different home styles is not easy, and then adding in their own kids and a cat.  We had enough going on with my dad marrying two other ladies, and then them living with us, and then their own kids living with us, and then some of their gran kids too.  Busy household.

Typical Utah Family

I was raised in the traditional Utah family.  My dad served a mission for the Latter Day Saints church, also known as Mormons, then he met my mom at BYU, and later married in the Salt Lake temple.

My parents had 8 kids,  me being the 6th child.  We went to church every Sunday, said our prayers for every meal and at our bedside before going to bed.  I even recall praying as a family before every road trip, so that we would travel safely with no problems.  Praying comes with all religions, I am just stating that we did it a lot.

When I was still very small, I'm guessing 2nd grade, my parents found another church that they could not prove wrong, so they did what they believed was the right thing to do.  This church practiced and lived the laws of consecration, and polygamy.   This is where all the money you make and all your belongings go into the "pool" with everyone else's belongings.  Then spent as needed.  At least this is the way I understood it.  They also practiced plural marriage.  With all the scriptures my dad knew front and back, he could not find this church to be wrong.  So we all joined.

Our family had a big, new swing set at this time, and it went to live at someone else's home, because they needed it  more, apparently, and we did not need it as much as they did.  We then moved soon after to a city closer to where they wanted us to live.

Life changed for everyone in my family, as you can imagine.  I have so many memories that have made me who I am today.  I still say, "praise the Lord" in my head when something happens, such as the other day when carrying a six pack of soda in from the car, two slipped out and crashed to the ground...since there was no mess or pain involved, I instinctively said, "praise the Lord" with a sigh of relief.

I have so many interesting memories about growing up, and have decided to write my journey though it all.  I write these as memories, not looking for criticism of any kind.