oh god. i'd buried this one deep in my subconscious...
I trusted my parents implicitly, as they weren't the lying type at all - being Jewish, I was the kid who marched into school and confidently informed all of my little friends that Santa wasn't real and their parents were making it up, for instance.
However, we had a very elderly and ill cat, who I loved dearly. Eventually he became incontinent and stuff, and my parents evidently couldn't face telling a cute little 7-year-old girl that they were off to kill him. So they told me that they were going to take him to live at the vet's, with the justification "with both of us working, we don't have enough time to look after Marmie properly, but the vet looks after animals all day so he'll like taking care of him." This made perfect sense at the time, and was also completely acceptable to me because I liked the vet. I even remember having a quite elaborate set-up in my head where Marmie lived in the basement beneath the vet's surgery, and when customers came in he would ask them if they'd like to have an elderly and ailing ginger cat for free, which to my mind was a great deal, so someone would be bound to take him home.
It was another of those long-runners, it was several years before I casually asked my parents whether they'd ever heard back from the vet about anyone taking Marmie home. In retrospect, I guess the lie was rather transparent, but like I said, I trusted them.

Thanks for opening up old wounds, b3ta.
(pinky shminky, Sat 17 Jan 2004, 13:11, Reply)