Pet hall of fame

When I first met my wife, she wasn’t a “cat person.” She grew up in a family with dogs, and they were her “go to” pets.

When I grew up, we had a farm overflowing with animals — cats, a dog, cattle and chickens, along with the occasional horse and pig.

My wife’s dogs had the run of her house. They were part of the family, and she talks about the ones that were standouts — Big Dog, CB, Elvis — as she describes their escapades during the long small-town Texas summers.

Animals on our farm, though, were there for a purpose rather than entertainment. The cattle were there to provide food or breed, with their calves sold each year to help pay our bills. The chickens produced eggs to eat, the pigs typically wound up in our freezer, and we always kept one cow to provide our milk each day. The horses were my sisters’ youth agriculture projects, the cats lived in the barn and chased down mice and rats, and the dog was the intruder alarm system.

Anyway, when we married, my wife politicked constantly for a dog. But dogs need lots of attention, and since we both worked outside the home, that wasn’t possible. So I suggested instead that we get a cat, because they sleep most of the day anyway. And so we did.

Our first cat was friendly and loving, but it developed a serious problem that led to a week’s stay at an emergency vet facility. The cat recovered after a long and expensive stay, and when it came home, it loved us just the same.

But it hated — and I do mean hated — everyone else. Which was fine because we didn’t have a lot of visitors back then anyway.

Its eventual replacement has a place in my wife’s pet hall of fame: Spike trailed my wife throughout the house as first one son, and then another, was born and grew. It was common to see all four of them (my wife, two tiny sons and the cat) clambered together in a rocking chair, watching Winnie the Pooh at two in the morning when one son was sick and the other couldn’t sleep.

That cat wanted to be in the middle of everything; he was “Nana Kitty,” the self-appointed third parent. We rescued it from the SPCA primarily because when our almost 2-year-old saw the cat, he accidentally picked it up with an under-the-neck chokehold, and the cat just hung there like a rag doll, enjoying the attention.

Spike lived with us 13 years, until his little body finally gave out.

Now, as I write this column, our two cats (both rescued from local shelters, one after a car accident claimed its front left leg when it was 12 weeks old) are curled up next to my wife. They’re purring and occasionally stirring a bit just to make sure they’re not missing anything.

My wife is now a cat person. She claims she can look at the cats’ faces and tell what they’re thinking.

I look at their faces, and all I see are two round eyes staring back. I’m sure there’s something going on back there, but I choose not to worry about it.

If they’re hungry or thirsty, they let us know. And they’re no longer animals or even pets. Instead, they’re always hanging around with us, just like family.

Because that’s what they are.

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Last month Preston Hollow Advocate editor Monica S. Nagy attended two neighborhood high school musicals — Hillcrest’s “Legally Blonde” and W.T. White’s “Holidays with Hermione.” Nagy declared that “American Idol needs to stop by W.T. White” and that the Hillcrest students’ “stellar performances resulted in the best high school theater production I’ve seen.”

Read portions of her reviews below, and find photos at prestonhollow.advocatemag.com.

‘Legally Blonde’

“Senior Madeleine Crenshaw played the part of Elle Woods. For Crenshaw’s first HHS musical, she dominated the stage, but also stepped back and let lead actors like Jacob Mock, Lilly Stafford, Malik Busari, Demarcus Targton, Sara Cagle, Alan Ortiz and countless other student stars draw cheers and shouts from the crowd. The musical was about an hour long, but was so well choreographed and directed that it shocked me when I learned the students have worked on it only since October and not for at least one year. Let me just add one more thing: the leading lady and man are boyfriend and girlfriend in real life. How precious is that?”

‘Holidays with Hermione’

“There’s no doubt that Preston Hollow is packed with talented youth, and each time I visit a local play or musical I begin to wonder where all this talent is coming from. Surely their moms must have pressed headphones blasting Mozart up to their stomachs when these prodigies were in the womb. More than 250 choir, dance and theater students tperformed classics like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Blue Christmas.’ ”

Q&A: Mary Pat Higgins

Mary Pat Higgins worked as The Hockaday School’s chief financial officer for 22 years before recently accepting a position as president and CEO of the Dallas Holocaust Museum–Center for Education and Tolerance. We talk with Higgins about how she’ll use her experience to be an advocate for tolerance and educate the city’s youth when she officially becomes the museum’s leader Jan. 1.

What did you do as chief financial officer and associate head at Hockaday?

My functions were to oversee all the business operations, so everything non-academic like development, external affairs and admissions.