My Final Word . . .

. . . On the subject of my having a pet. I pretty much covered all the issues of what a responsibility one takes on in adopting a pet, but there is one other consideration, the one that may truly be my biggest issue. The one that caused me to suffer buyer’s regret and a mild panic attack.

I am emotional. You all knew that. I rarely make a decision that is not gut instinct-based, which has its pros and cons (very often the latter).  But more than that, I am very emotional when it comes to animals. Let me clarify this by saying that I am not the kind of person who would start selling family heirlooms to pay for a pet to have surgery; I’m very pragmatic when it comes to that sort of thing.

What I mean is that I am emotional when it comes to their feelings and well-being. Sometimes, I really believe I know what they are thinking and how they feel. And I get very upset when I see their pain. By way of an example, the other day I tried to watch Meerkat Manor which was a huge mistake. A snake bit one of a pair of siblings and the surviving one sat by his dying sister, licking her and watching her die.

I got very upset about it and would have strangled any old snake that happened to wander by in vengeance. Something similar almost happened on a show about hippos, but I saw the crocodile and knew what was going to happen to the baby hippo and changed the station in time to miss it. It’s a good thing; I can’t afford crocodile shoes, not even for the sake of sweet revenge.

Those animals were only on television so you can imagine how much more attached I get to those I actually know.  The deaths of some of my pets were more difficult to get through than the deaths of two of my grandparents (although I did pull out all the stops and cater their funerals very nicely, so don’t feel bad for them).

I do not want an animal to have that kind of hold over me again. Nor do I want an animal to be that reliant on me. Dexter used to start wailing if I was in the bathroom for more than five minutes, thinking I’d been Shanghai-d.   If I was busy and ignored John Morgan, he’d give me a wounded look (highly effective), then go under my bed and pout (don’t ask how I know he was pouting while he was under the bed–I know what I know).

An animal relies on a person for food and shelter and the like, but I don’t know that it should like us more than it does another animal.  I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to avoid a repeat of this.  How do you teach an animal to be self-sufficient? It’s not like you can send it to boarding school or something. But then I began to think of the way the pets of friends and relatives act towards their owners, and I saw that it is nothing at all like what mine did.

None of them have pets like Dexter or John Morgan, both of whom worshipped me. (That is not my ego speaking; it’s a fact.)  So, the problem is me.  I allowed my pets to see me as an equal (Monty used to bang his head against mine like big cats do to each other in the wild) and in return I treated them as equals. I simply cannot do that this time around.

I have to become Grandpa Joe.  After Grandma Gwen died, Grandpa was left with her dog Toby. Grandpa did not like pets in any form, but it was my grandmother’s dog so he cared for it.   And he cared for it better than many people who actually like dogs might have, but their relationship was cordial and nothing more.

They got along very well, but were essentially companions who had little in common and happened to share a house.  And that dog knew which one of them called the shots.   This is what I have to do.  There were always things about this grandfather that I admired and wished I could emulate better, but his behavior towards an animal never occurred to me as something to aspire to until now.