Philipp Schott - The Battle Cry of the Siamese Kitten: Even More Tales from the Accidental Veterinarian

A picture exists of me at about six months of age being shown a black-and-white dairy cow. My father and I are on a snow-dusted country lane outside of Jlich, in western Germany, where I was born. The lane runs beside a fenced field. Everything is flat and barren and cold-looking, but there is this cow as the singular object of interest. My father is holding me out towards the fence. The cow is craning its neck towards me, but I am looking sideways at the camera and my mother, who is taking the picture. My facial expression is one of pure astonishment. My eyes are wide and my mouth open round like a big O. This was likely the largest animal I had ever seen.

That was the first picture of me with an animal. Later ones in my toddler years, by then in Saskatoon, show me trying awkwardly to pet a random outdoor cat while wearing a Michelin Man snowsuit and feeding old rubbery carrots to the deer at the local zoo. Back then nobody, including the zookeepers, thought this might be a bad idea.

So those were my earliest documented encounters with animals. My earliest clear memory of an animal, however, is of my cousins dog, a black cocker spaniel named Tino. This would have been the early 1970s, and I might have been five or seven years old. As I explained in The AccidentalVeterinarian, there was no way I was going to have a dog or a cat. My parents didnt actively dislike them, but it was just that pets simply werent part of their world, any more than watching pro sports was, or eating Jell-O, peanut butter, or marshmallows. These were things other people did, and that was fine, but it just didnt interest them. This would eventually change, but not until much later (and never for the marshmallows or pro sports).

But somehow the interest in animals was there. Was it genetic? My father was passionate about birds and impressed me when they landed on his outstretched hand. He claimed that, according to German legend, because he was born on a Sunday, he had the gift of being able to talk to birds. (What special powers being born on a Saturday might have granted me were never explained.) But rather than genetics, I think it might have been because from a young age I read like a threshing machine. I quickly exhausted the childrens section of the small local J.S. Wood branch of the library. I remember the day clearly when my mother suggested that I have a look at the teen and young adult section instead. I began with the letter A on the non-fiction shelves and worked my way through. (Yes, I was an odd child, and a self-confident one, which is an unusual combination and explains a lot about me. But never mind that.) D was a gold mine, encompassing both dinosaurs and dogs. In retrospect I realize the library likely didnt have any cat books. Otherwise, my abstract affection might have alighted on them. But as it was, the J.S. Wood had a gorgeously illustrated dog breed guidebook. It was so orderly and alphabetical. I was captivated.

And there, in that book, was a picture of my cousins dog, Tino. Or at least a dead ringer for him. Glossy black fur, long silky ears, warm brown eyes looking right at me from the page. From that point on, in the weird logic of the small child, Tino, although I had only met him once, became my dog in my mind and my heart. And that logic truly was weird because not only had I only met Tino once, but he also lived an ocean away. We had immigrated to Canada and all the extended family was still in Germany. My parents were frugal, though, and were able to save enough for us to visit Germany four times during my childhood. This was when flying was still a big deal and people dressed up for the occasion. It was between two of the visits that my dog obsession hit its peak. During this time, I received a dog guide of my own for my birthday. It was a small, white hardcover book that began with Affenpinscher and ended with Yorkshire terrier, but I liked to imagine that it ended with Zwergpinscher, German for miniature pinscher, so that I could say that I had memorized all the dog breeds from A to Z. As I said, I was an odd child.