# 15 questions to ask an immigrant parent about pets and animals

People who will not talk about themselves will talk about a dog. These questions use the animals of a life to reach the houses, the family and the losses around them. Ask in the language they dreamed in, if you can. Even a few words of it changes what they remember.

1. What is the most trouble a pet ever got you into?
2. What was the first animal that was yours? What was it called, and who named it?
   Who named it is who was in charge.
3. Was there a dog or a cat in the house when you were growing up, and whose bed did it sleep on?
   Where the dog slept is a map of the family's affections.
4. Did you grow up around working animals: horses, cows, hens, pigeons? Who looked after them?
   Working animals mean a working childhood, and that is a different book.
5. Tell me about an animal that got loose. Who chased it, and where did it end up?
6. Were you ever bitten, kicked or stung badly enough to remember? What were you doing at the time?
7. Who in the family talked to the animals as if they were people? What did they say to them?
   How someone speaks to a dog is how they speak when nobody is judging.
8. Was there an animal that was not supposed to be in the house, and who let it in?
9. Did an animal ever save the day, or ruin one? Tell me the whole thing.
10. What animal were you afraid of as a child, and did you ever get over it?
   A childhood fear and its ending is a complete small story.
11. Which pet was really yours, and which was the family's that you ended up feeding?
12. What wild creature did you see that you have never forgotten? Where were you?
13. If you could have one of them back for an afternoon, which animal, and what would you do?
14. Which animal did you lose that you still think about? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   Grief for an animal is often the first grief, and the safest to tell.
15. Did you ever have to put an animal down, or give one away? Who did it, and who cried? (tender: ask once, late, in person)

## How to use these questions

Ask by voice, not by form. Record it. One or two questions a visit is enough; the follow-up ("who else was there?", "what did she say?", "what happened the day after?") matters more than the next question on the list. Tender questions are marked; ask them once, late, and with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question itself.

## About Tellforth

Tellforth asks questions like these by voice, remembers every answer, asks the next question a good listener would, and writes a finished book from what was said: a memoir in the person's own words, or a novel built on the true story. You own every recording. https://tellforth.com