[Today’s run: 7 miles]
I am here to confess that I am not a pet person. I am not allergic. I do like animals, in small doses.
Our baseline pet load has been three mouths to feed since we moved to Mississippi. We had a dog on arrival and soon obtained two cats which we reverse-inherited from our children. Early this year we lost a cat after years of illness. And then shortly after our overstuffed dog got cancer and also died. It was rather traumatic. I was starting to see some relief, a light at the end of the tunnel.
Before the week was out we had another dog, even bigger and more obtrusive. A nice dog, don’t get me wrong. But its like having a foreign person who can’t speak english who needs to be let in and out a few times a day and leaves creases in my bed when left home alone. Why? Why would I want that? We could adopt a stranger from a foreign country and let him smoke a hooka in the guest room and hang his loofa in the shower and cook with a charcoal brazier on the dining table and it would hardly be less disruptive of the household. Then, when said foreign person dies you cry a lot and go get another one the next day. I don’t feel like I get anything much out of the relationship except responsibility, and I have no lack of that already.
My wife is a pet person and she saw something “cute” and now we are back up to two cats and one dog. But this time, instead of being an old-age home for our son/daughter’s pet, a refuge to fulfill a humanitarian commitment, we are starting over with a critter who could be here for the next 20 years.
Why? I haven’t been presented with a reason that breaks through the impenetrable fog of my perpetual obtuseness on this subject. There must be something, bless her heart, that life is not providing so that she has to have these little dependents lolling around, shredding the furnishings and eating our retirement money.
Of course, we are married in sickness and health, richer/poorer, till death do us part. So there will eventually be an end of the animal parade. Either she will be an overrun widowed cat lady, or I will have a short spell of peace and quiet. I’m told that in the Garden of Eden all of the animals lived out doors. That sounds like Heaven: where the lion and lamb lie down together, not with me.
So, I spent some time recently looking at motorcycles on Craigslist. I’m not going to buy one; maybe on the off chance someone will give me one. I feel an inexpressible need to go somewhere at high speeds.