COLUMN: The dog-eat-dog world of pet ownership
Recently, a friend of mine at work was a few hours late because her cat had to have surgery, which made it impossible for its newly-born kittens to get their needed milk, so she had to stay home and leave work during the day to feed them.
I also once worked with a girl who had new puppies and did not want to leave them home alone.
So, she came in extra early each day, hiding the puppies underneath her desk at her cubical, and then with ninja-like stealth put them in her bag on the way out.
I simply cannot understand such actions, but I think that might have something to do with my history with pets.
My first pet was a black cat named Blacky (I haven’t always been the creative genius I am today).
The day I got him he ran up the telephone pole in our front yard, didn’t come down for a couple of days and then disappeared.
My second pet was a family dog named Spunky.
He was one of my favorites, but had this habit of running after cars. One day Spunky was running after the afternoon school bus and was run over by both the front and back wheels.
My two siblings on the bus that day actually felt Spunky’s demise.
He was so non-spunky at that point, being dead, and flat, that we didn’t have to dig a very deep grave to bury his remains.
Jazz – named after the Transformer character, not the Utah Jazz – was my third pet.
He was kind of a collie/mutt and was a pretty good dog.
He stayed outside, chained to the clothesline pole and seemed to enjoy his life, but then made a bad turn.
He climbed up on top of his doghouse and jumped over the neighbor’s fence, hanging himself by his chain.
I gave up on pets after that until I was married and my children were old enough to fall in love with kittens.
So pet number four was a pretty gray kitten with cool-green eyes named Sniper.
Sniper was a patient cat for the most part, allowing my children to pack it around the house by its neck and rarely striking back and drawing blood.
Sniper was kind of a sickly cat and seemed to get worse and worse until it came up to me one day, looking like something from “Pet Cemetery” and being followed by the kitty version of the Grim Reaper, called Frisky, carrying a bag of kitty litter and making that obnoxiously low sound cats make when they are mating.
I didn’t see Sniper after that, but I figure he went to that big sandbox in the sky.
We’ve tried the fish tank, too, with everything from snails, to fish, to algae-eaters.
The only remnant of it, though, is a small dwarf swimming-frog named Ribbit, who has somehow managed to stay alive for just less than two years, even in the same house as myself.
If you are an animal lover, please try not to judge me so harshly.
I just haven’t had a good strong relationship with one of our four-legged friends and am a little bit afraid of making a commitment.
Either that or I simply need Canine Counseling or a support group for people inflicted with Kittyphobia.
In any case, I will not be missing work or my favorite television show for any Sparky in the near future.
Bryce Casselman’s column runs every two weeks in the Encore section. E-mail him with comments at yanobi@hotmail.com.