A Short History of My Pets

I like animals. Really, I do. But I am not your typical animal lover. When I was very young, my brother and I had a dog. It had puppies that we had to give away and when we moved, we had to give the dog away, too. Soon thereafter, we learned that it had broken off of its chain outside of its new house and gotten hit by a car. Ironically, we gave the dog away in the first place because we didn't have a fence at our new house and we didn't want to have her chained up outside.

At our new house, we got a couple of cats. Our cats were always indoor/outdoor cats, meaning that we let them come and go as they please. Our early cats were named Sylvester and Leo. Leo was mine and Sylvester was my brother's. Not long after we got these cats, Leo was hit by a car directly in front of our house. Very disturbing to say the least. As for Sylvester, we out that it was actually a female when it gave birth to four kittens on my bed while I was sleeping on it. That was a neat experience but also quite gross at the same time. Anyway, we kept two of the kittens of that litter. The other two ended up at the SPCA. Those two that we kept were called Smokey and Boots.

Smokey was technically my cat and Boots was my sister Michelle's. When they reached adulthood, they constantly fought and, eventually, Boots left. We only saw him a couple of times after that, but he never really came back to our yard.

A little later in Smokey's life, he came home with an injured tail. When I use the term "injured" that is to say that the bone was clearly visible along three-fourths of his tail. Very gross. So, late that night, we took him to an animal hospital and he came back home in a day or two with a nub instead of a tail. Yes, they had to amputate but he lived a full, long life after that. I'm not totally sure how much that cost but according to my parents it was more expensive than it would've been to simply have the animal destroyed.

During that long, full life that Smokey lived, he sired a little kitten by a stray that we had sort of adopted. (I'm not certain of the kitten's name but I think it may have been Boots II or Boots: Redux.) I can't remember what became of the mother cat, but I am fairly certain she was hit by a car. This "new" Boots was Michelle's. Unfortunately for Boots, he was also an indoor/outdoor cat.

One evening, Michelle spotted a dead cat in the street and, sadly, it was little Boots. She cried and bemoaned the loss of her beloved feline friend and my parents buried it in the back yard. A few days later, the realBoots came trotting back up the house. He wasn't dead after all! This was quite a relief for Michelle which is why it's so sad that when Boots actually washit by a car, he didn't receive a proper burial. His carcass was simply left in the road. I guess everybody had used up all of their grief on the mystery cat that was buried in the back yard.

Through all of these times, my brother and I had hamsters, parakeets, and fish. The most memorable of all of these is the hamster of mine that had babies.

I'd always heard that when an animal has babies, you should never touch or move the babies since doing so could cause the mother to stop feeding her young. I learned the hard way that hamsters don't just stop feeding their young if you move them; they brutally murder them.

My pet hamster had just had about four pink, cute, little babies. However, the hamster cage reeked. I was told by my parents that I had to clean the cage so I cut a piece of cardboard out and used it to gently move the babies out of the way while I cleaned it. After all of the wood chips and other hamster cage paraphernalia were in place, I returned the mother hamster and her young to their little home. Soon afterward, I heard some small, high pitched squeaks. I rushed to my room and, to my horror, watched as the mother hamster picked each and every one of her babies up and gnawed away at their heads until they were dead. I was probably twelve or thirteen at the time, so to say that this was traumatic would be an overstatement. After seeing several of my own cats dead in the street in front of our house, I think it's safe to say that I was very aware of the mortality of animals.

I could go on for about three or four more paragraphs explaining all the circumstances surrounding the demise of my various pets but you get the idea. Animals simply die, but the pets that you love and care about pass away.