The Family Bone.

Mom's View:

As I was growing up, we always had pets in the house. At least a dog, and sometimes a couple of dogs or a dog and a cat. We weren’t allowed to have reptiles or rodents, and my mom hid the ant farm my aunt bought us before we could even order the tenants. But we did have some tropical fish in the kitchen. As I recall, they were ever rotating due to untimely deaths and fish cannibalism.

Our first dog was called Squeaky, named because all she could do was squeak when she was found at the garbage dump as a puppy. A Good Samaritan rescued her and her siblings, and my mother was sold the minute she opened her door to the Samaritan’s knock. Squeaky was part beagle and part rat terrier (I think), had a solid temperament (except when my little brother tried to kiss her on the lips during her nap), and was my first introduction to mortality.

After Squeaky, we had a purebred golden retriever named Chambertin (my parents’ favorite wine at the time. I know. I know. My parents were yuppies before the phrase was coined, if you must know). She was a sweet, obedient dog, and she spent hours in the backyard retrieving the tennis balls my brother hit during impromptu batting practices. She was a constant presence during my childhood, playing in the snow, walking alongside us as we traipsed through the woods on various adventures, sleeping next to the woodstove during down times.

Stormy, a kitten found by a truck driver in the middle of the highway during a rainstorm, came home at some point during Cham's reign. Clever name, right? I can make fun of it because I’m the one who named her. She had to be bottle fed and was never particularly social given her traumatic beginnings. But whenever I was sick, she parked herself on the end of my bed until I felt better. In fact, I knew I was getting better when I woke up alone. Then there was Mochi (Grey Persian who stared at lightbulbs), Porsche (dog so smart she was a little scary), Corey (dog so dumb she was a little scary), and my mom’s current dog, Derby. Derby’s a schnoodle who loves neck rubs. I didn’t live with the last three, but they’re still part of the family, right?

Given this history, it’s not hard to imagine why I’ve always had my own pets since I first moved out of the house and lived on my own. My first foray into pet ownership was a complete disaster and was deeply unfair of me. Roy was a guinea pig I bought during my freshman year at college, and who was shuffled from person to person after my college dorm roommate told me she wasn’t interested in having a pet (I thought she was being unreasonable at the time if that gives you any indication of what I was like when I was young). I took him with me when I sublet an apartment (really, it was a tenement with a bathtub in the kitchen) on the Lower East Side for the summer. I had no idea what a guinea pig liked, and I have to imagine that the poor guy was pretty depressed the whole time he was forced to live with me. One night, during a party, someone poured beer in his cage. While I’d like to say that was an aberration, I’m guessing that was only one of the many indignities poor Roy was forced to suffer in my care.

As it turns out, I was the victim of a violent crime that summer, and I left the city and my apartment without Roy. A good friend, whom I similarly abandoned in a crappy position, told me she found a school or something that took him, which I’m grateful for now but at the time was too self absorbed to appreciate. I actually still think about Roy and I apologize to him for being a horrible pet parent. I’m also sorry to my friend, but that’s probably the subject of a different post.

Since Roy, I’ve had numerous pets, all of whom I’ve treated much better than Roy, and most of whom would be deemed society’s rejects were they humans. Take Moses, for example. Moses lived on the city streets, and kept showing up on a friend’s porch after he’d been beaten up. She’d feed him for a couple of days and tend his wounds, and then when he felt better he’d leave again. I captured him in a box when he showed up with his ear half ripped off, a hole through one leg, and half his fur gone and dragged him to the vet for medical treatment and neutering.

A couple of days later, I went back to pick him up.

“He’s not a particularly nice cat, is he?” The vet handed him back to me dubiously.
I shrugged and went home.

He actually was a particularly nice cat. He just didn’t like a vet cutting his balls off.

Unless you’ve grown up with pets or simply owned a lot of them, I don’t think you have the same feeling about them that I do. When you’ve lived long enough in a house with – at various times - your parents, your brother, your sister, your husband, your kids and your pets, you tend to think of the latter as a part of your family. They are no more and no less important than anyone else. You recognize their unique personality traits, and you mourn them when they die.

When Moses got cancer six years after I first brought him home, I was beside myself. I kept him alive probably longer than I should have because I wanted to try anything I could. I had him tested; I considered chemo. I considered anything that might give him some additional, quality, life. Finally, when all appeared fruitless, I made the hard choice to let him go.

A few weeks later, I was at a birthday party for one of _____________’s friends, and I was talking to his parents. I told them about how I’d had a difficult summer because I’d lost Moses to cancer. The friend’s mother shrugged.

“So you’ll get a new cat.”

And that pretty much stalled the conversation right there. Moses wasn’t “a cat”. He wasn’t a generic classification that could easily be replaced. He was Moses! He slept on the dining room table in a patch of sunlight. He followed me all over the house when I was home. He agitated the dog and then got mad at her for getting wound up. Moses! You know. That guy.

She didn’t know.
But I do, and for that, I’m grateful.

Son's View:

I think that pets rock. They are the only thing that really let you pet it. If I asked my mom if I could pet her she would say no. I am conducting a test in which I ask
_________: “mom can I pet your hair?”
Mom: “what?”
_________: “can I pet your hair?”
Mom: “why? No! What are you doing?!”
_________: “nothing, tee hee.”
Now I am going to ask our new cat Ruby if I can pet her hair.
_________: “can I pet your hair Ruby?”
Ruby: “Meow (translation: Yes)”
_________: “thank you.”
R: “purrrrrrrrrrrrr.”
See, pets keep it short and simple.