I don’t have pets. I never have had pets, apart from a short interlude, a very short interlude, when my sister and I bought white mice and kept them in a box under one of the beds, supposedly unbeknown to our mother. Of course, she soon discovered them and threw them out.
When my daughter was about six years old the mother of one of her little friends bought her a goldfish for her birthday, declaring that every child should have a pet to care for as it gives them a sense of responsibility! I thought this was a bit high-handed on the part of the mother, who was supposedly a friend of mine. After all, we might have been allergic to goldfish, unlikely as that might seem, and, besides, I did not presume to tell her how to bring up her children!
Some years later I gave in to demands from the same daughter to buy her a hamster. Hamsters are the most ridiculous pets; they sleep all day and then keep you awake at night spinning around in their silly little exercise wheels. What’s more they can develop a decidedly over-ripe fruity smell - not what you want in your bedroom, I would have thought.
It’s not that I dislike animals. I would never do anything to harm an animal. I just don’t particularly want to share my home with one.
Maybe as a reaction to not having had pets in her childhood my daughter has had dogs ever since she began to live independently. The latest came from Cyprus as part of a scheme to save abandoned and ill-treated dogs over there. Her dog is not strictly speaking a rescue dog but the puppy of a rescue dog. The family was interviewed by someone from the organisation to ensure that they would look after the pup well! Considering that they were paying about £350 for the dog to be brought here, I think it unlikely that anyone acquiring a dog that way would then mistreat it, but I suppose anything can happen in this world. And by the way, strictly speaking, Rocket, the dog in question, is as much mine as my daughter’s since she asked for financial assistance to acquire him!
My son, by way of a contrast, is a cat person. For years he and his wife had a cat who was born in my daughter’s house, specifically in the drawer under her eldest daughter’s bed. (Yes, as well as dogs she has also had cats!) This kitten was named Mitch by my daughter’s children but it was decided that Mitch could not remain at home forever with her mother cat. The other kittens from the litter had been given away already. So she was adopted by my son, went to live in London, where she was promptly renamed Audrey, lived to a ripe old age and on her demise was wept over by my son’s small daughter.
For a very brief period, before they had their own human child, my son and his wife trialled having a rescue dog, Gracie. Unfortunately Gracie, not much more than a pup, thought that Audrey, by now a quite venerable elderly lady cat, was some kind of toy or, at the very least, a playmate and harassed her mercilessly. So Gracie had to return to the rescue centre. When a suitable length of time had gone by after the demise of Audrey, my son and family decided they needed not one cat but two to fill a hole in their lives. And so Smokey and Buttons came on the scene.
People will complicate their lives in this way!
Number One Granddaughter has a whole menageries: dog, cat, bearded dragon, snake, some other kind of reptile, tortoise and one remaining rat. She did have four rats but three have given in to old age. The last one will undoubtedly also go to meet his maker soon. My daughter and I have worked hard at persuading her not to replace the rats as they are exceedingly smelly animals!
All this about animals has been prompted by my looking out of the window and seeing Chester, a neighbour’s cat, digging a hole in a pile of leaves under a tree in my garden, occasionally looking around furtively as if he could sense I was watching him. He then proceeded to do his cat business in the hollow thus created and covered it all up with more leaves. Quite clean animals, cats, I suppose, so long as this occurs in piles of leaves and not in a child’s sandpit.
Another contributory event was a discovery in the side garden last time our smallest grandson was here. He was taking a look at the snowdrops in the garden as he likes to know the names of plants and flowers and enjoys asking questions about them. Suddenly he said to me, “There’s dog poo in your snowdrops!” And, indeed, there was! A large deposit! I may be jumping to conclusions but I suspect this is the work of one of the next door neighbours’ dogs. They have two of them and occasionally they let the dogs have supervised play in the shared back garden. Usually they collect deposits left by the dogs but on occasion I have found a gift under a bush on our side of the shared area. As regards the side garden, I imagine one of the dogs ran up the steps there and left his or her calling card among my snowdrops. You rarely see a dog loose on the street so it is unlikely to be the work of a passing hound! Whoever is the culprit, I am left with dog poo in my snowdrops!
This is one reason why I don’t have pets!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.
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