Pets

I’m not much of a pet person. I grew up out in the country with outside cats who helped keep the critters to a minimum. Only for a few brief years here and there did we ever have any kind of pet inside the house.

Just before my wife and I got married, she (we) adopted a kitten from some folks sitting in front of Walmart. She was the runt of the litter, so of course my wife was drawn to her. That was seventeen years ago. About a year later, we adopted a puppy from the animal shelter. Both of our pets are still alive.

To summarize, yes, we have a seventeen year old cat and a sixteen year old dog. Other than the dog’s back legs not working so well, they are both in good health considering their age.

That said, we’ve already talked to the kids about the fact that (realistically) neither animal will be around much longer, and the topic of what pet(s) we should get next inevitably comes up.

I’m in the minority in my own home because I really don’t want anymore pets. Even after all these years of having animals in the house, I still think it’s funny that humans adopt other living creatures to live in their houses with them. It’s been fun at times, but I’m kinda over it.

To be clear, I don’t hate or even dislike animals. I just really enjoy simplicity. I don’t want more living creatures in the house to have to watch over and help take care of. Two kids is enough.

Like I said, I’m in the minority in my household. The rest of the family wants to get more animals at some point. I’ve known for a while that I was going to lose this battle, and a few weeks ago, I finally conceded.

Most Saturdays, the local PetSmart has pet adoptions in the store. I agreed to take my wife and daughter to LOOK at the cats. As far as animals go, I like cats best. I can relate to their moodiness and independence. They also tend to be lower maintenance than dogs. So I figured if we were going to get another pet anyway, I could at least help guide things in a direction that would work for me.

Before we ever even got over to the cats, we were magically drawn to the dogs barking in the middle of the store.

(I really, really don’t like barking dogs. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves (pun intended). When I was in high school, I put my hand through a window because I was beating on it trying to get our neighbor’s dog to stop barking. I still have a scar on my hand from that.)

Amongst all of the barking dogs, there was one who was just laying their in his crate not making a peep. When we walked over to the crate, he didn’t even really respond to us being there. My wife and daughter were drawn to him immediately. I was still trying to walk over to the cats.

It turns out that he is a five(ish) year old stray who had been at the shelter for almost 4 months. The organization doing the adoption saved him from being euthanized in hopes that someone would eventually adopt him. They let us get him out, and they gave us a leash so we could walk him around the store. After relieving himself on one of the shelves, he started to perk up and wag his tail a bit. He was happy to have some attention.

The decision about whether or not we going to adopt him was left up to me. How was I supposed to say no to that? I’m not heartless.

So after filling out some paperwork, we left PetSmart about an hour later, new dog in tow. I don’t know that we ever really did look at the cats much that day. In fact, I’m still not sure exactly what happened that day. Things are still a bit fuzzy on my end.

He’s a good dog though. He’s very calm and hasn’t shown even the slightest bit of aggression. He’s still very skittish, especially around me. He won’t come up to me all the way yet, but he does let me come to him to pet him and put on his leash. He likes my wife a lot more than he likes me so I’m guessing he’s pretty smart too.