AN ODE TO OUR PETS: CELEBRATIN THE ANIMALS IN OUR LIVES

 

I grew up in an apartment in the city where a pet was not a possibility. Nonetheless, my love for animals started here. Our landlords had a smooth-haired terrier I quickly bonded with and even after we moved away, I never forgot Nikki, though I saw him only one more time in his declining years.

After years of hard work and sacrifice my parents realized the dream of home ownership in the suburbs some twenty minutes south of Boston. For ten-year-old me, the most promising development was the groundwork set for an animal in my life. Before that happened, however, I bonded with my neighbor’s dogs. Ben was the first, already an old black lab by the time we moved next door, and one of the smartest dogs I have ever seen. I have vivid memories of the old dog turning his head in response whenever I called him by name and staring at me awaiting what I had to say.

I would ask him, “Where is the ball?” and he would run to retrieve it from under the bushes the separated our yards and bring it to me. I didn’t like pulling it from his mouth so I would say, “drop it,” and Ben knew just what to do. Ben, despite his enduring energy, didn’t live long after I became his neighbor and my neighbor replaced him with another black lab he named Mike. What Mike lacked in the understanding of verbal commands he more than compensated for in heart. He was the kindest gentles dog, with a propensity for the comical with his clumsy manner and mindless howling. Mike was a full adult by the time he came to live next door and it wasn’t long before I started noticing white whiskers on his snout, but we had a decade’s worth of playing in my yard and taking walks in the woods behind my house.

Our street was dog friendly, and it says something of the unique character of the four-legged friends that, over thirty years later, I remember them distinctly. There was Mindy the collie and Sheba the Siberian husky. My first pet, however, was not a dog, was not furred or four-legged. It wasn’t even a mammal but a fish; a goldfish I named Finly. A fish is a far cry from a dog and our interactions were undoubtedly more limited, but Finly was the first animal whose care was put in my hands. From this tiny creature I learned about the responsibility of pet ownership and the bonds formed through that relationship of co-dependency. With my neighbor’s dogs I bonded over having fun, with Finly I formed a bond from the very act of caring for him (changing the water in the fishbowl once a week and feeding him twice daily). Finly lasted a good three years and I grew to love that fish.

The inevitable all pet owners must sadly endure someday happened while I was away at summer camp in New Hampshire with my Scout troop. I got called one day to the headquarters of Camp Wanocksett, there was a phone call from my mother telling me Finly was found belly-up in his bowl that morning. My parents must have known what my first pet meant to me because they assured me they put him in a container and gave him a burial in our backyard (marked with a blue ribbon) which I visited when I returned home. I would miss him and though I was always assured it was not the case I couldn’t help but feel I must have failed Finly somehow resulting in his death. Loving a pet will do that to you.

Cats have always played a big role in my life. While we still lived in the city we would often take trips to the South Shore to visit my aunt and uncle and Bianca, the white Persian cat they took in when I was four. Bianca became increasingly temperamental as she aged but she cemented the seed of thought that my first fur-bearing pet would be a cat. Sure enough, almost fifteen years later, in my senior year of high school we adopted two cats from the same litter. The male and bigger of the two we named Pumpkin but the red fur that gave him his name as a kitten turned into a beautiful sandy color as he grew while Jessie, even into adulthood, never lost the grey and white complexion that earned her the nickname Little Squirrel. Looking back these two felines were with me during my most transformative and eventful years of my life. Together we lived through quite a bit of history as well. They were with me when I went off to college, they were there to come home to when classes were cancelled on 9/11 and would be again over a decade later after the scary ride home on the day of the Marathan bombing, they got me through the first break-up that actually crushed me, and then saw me through the rest of my college years, a time marked by the Iraq War and finding my way in the world. The turbulent years immediately after college where I was carving out my life were made easier by their company. Finally, they provided a source of comfort for all of us during my father’s final years when his battle with ALS created a sensation of hopelessness.

No one who has cared for a pet could question them becoming family. The parallels outnumber the distinctions. We care for them because we love them and, sometimes and for some people, they are all we have and we are all they have. We are repaired tenfold by their unconditional love and company. Both Pumpkin and Jessie lived to be almost twenty, Pumpkin going at eighteen and Jessie at nineteen. I was far from a pet owner, but they lived a long life. I hope I can at least say I played a part in that. It was the least I could do for them.