Dad's rule was: no animals in the house. However, when he brought Soo-Ling home, a young seal-point Siamese cat, that changed a bit. First, he bought her a jeweled collar! Previous cats had never rated even a plain collar. Then when she was ready to have her first litter of kittens (spaying or neutering was not common in the Fifties), he fixed her up a box next to the stairs going down to the basement, and rigged a heat lamp above the box! The day she began birthing the kittens, Kim and I were allowed to stay home from school and watch. I'm not sure what Soo-Ling thought of all this, but she rather calmly bore those little bags, each containing a kitten, and then proceeded to eat the bag (amniotic sac, I now know) and lick each kit dry. She ended up with four kits: Jet, who was mine, Calico who was Kimberly's, Shadow who went to live with my aunt Kathleen, and another who we gave away locally.
It was so fun to watch her raise those kittens. Eventually the box was moved out to the back porch, but by then we were somewhat used to having cats in the house. That summer we discovered how to get our way without bothering Dad.
Our house was clad half-way up with pinkish brick, topped by one row of slightly-slanted short header bricks. We noticed that the cats could walk along the header, right at the window in our room that could be opened out! So we'd remove the screen and open the window once Jet or Calico passed, open the window, and in they would come. We just had to remember to put up the screen again so we didn't get caught. :-)
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