Blogenning Theme of the Week: Pets

Part of the fun of the Blogenning is having people get to decide what one of your posts that week should be about. Some weeks it’s incredibly easy, some weeks you have nothing to say about that subject and just have to roll with it. This week we’re talking about pets. I’ll let you decide where this one falls.

Growing up I always liked the idea of having pets. I had an aquarium for a while. I was around 5 or 6, and could spend hours watching them swim around while making up stories about what they were doing. This was years and years before Finding Nemo came out, so at the time it seemed sort of novel to me. I think at one point I even drew and wrote a short book (crayons and construction paper make a book, obviously) about what my fish were up to.

My parents both had dogs and cats around the house when they were growing up, but neither of them were really in to the idea of pets as adults. I think it was too much work for too little perceived payout for them. Eventually my mom had bird feeders out back and used to treat the birds almost as her pets, but it’s just not the same as having a furry little creature wandering around the house.

Sure our neighbors had dogs (which barked constantly, much to my dad’s chagrin), and family friends had dogs. My aunt had cats. I got some exposure, but it wasn’t until college that I really lived with one. It was a cat Ian had brought from home, and it wandered around the apartment like it was stoned out of its mind. It was generally pleasant, but it really did not care about my existence at all. Partially it feels like my fault. I never really wanted it to wander around my room because I had guitars and stuff sitting out I didn’t want damaged. It was nice to have something wandering around the apartment (aside from the mice), but never really clicked with me.

I’ve clicked most with dogs, though. Cats will endure letting me pet them, but dogs seem genuinely happy to see you. Someday if I’m with someone who wants a pet and I get a say in it, I’m going to vote for a terrier or a corgi, but until that day, I’m content not to have a pet.

Whenever someone asks if I have a pet, I tend to point out that my roommate is allergic. This is entirely a cop out on my part to avoid having to go in to a long winded explanation about my feelings on pets, which, frankly, bores me almost as much as it would the person asking. If I really wanted a pet, if it meant enough to me to turn down having an entirely awesome roommate, I’d do something about it. That’s really not it. Right now I just don’t have the time and am not home enough to not feel like I was abandoning it constantly. It’s tough enough for an animal in the city, especially a dog, to find places to run and to play. If it was couped up at home all day with no one to play with, I’d feel pretty damn bad.

So I don’t have a pet, and, you know what, that’s completely cool with me. I have pet projects instead, and those keep me plenty busy.

– B

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