Pets and Peeves

Parking took at least five minutes today, because I was driving a new truck that didn’t belong to me. While I was maneuvering the truck back and forth between different parking spots, I caught sight of a black cat at the rear of the parking lot.

The cat was sniffing around what appeared to be discarded food containers, and didn’t seem to be wearing a collar. By the time I finished parking and started walking toward it, it had disappeared into the overgrown weeds and brush.

I walked around the area, trying to make cat-friendly noises. (The best I could come up with was a smacking of my lips that had once lured a neighborhood cat when I was thirteen.) There was a thin stretch of maybe five feet of brush between the parking lot asphalt and the fence that marked the beginning of a busy road.

I didn’t see any houses nearby from where the cat could have wandered.

Once I got into work, I called Waltham Animal Control. “There’s a stray cat around our office building,” I started.

The man quickly interrupted me. “Oh, we don’t pick up stray cats, ma’am. Waltham’s overrun with cats. We just don’t have the room.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly. “But what about dogs?” I asked. Here my biggest concern about calling Animal Control was that they’d euthanize the cat. It hadn’t even occurred to me that they wouldn’t even care.

“We pick up dogs. Just not cats.”

Weren’t they called Animal Control, not Dog Control?

“Who picks up the cats, then?”

“No one. You’ll find every place is overrun with cats and kittens,” he confided. “I’m already full up. Too many stray cats, with people moving and leaving them.”

I hung up the phone in disbelief.

I was reminded of one of the managers at Chris’s company. Chris had told me that the manager, who had recently given birth to a son, was moving to Colorado shortly. Of her two cats, one was easy to take care of, while the other cried when the people weren’t around.

According to her, due to airline restrictions, she was only allowed to bring one cat with her. So she decided to put an ad in the paper to get rid of the cat that was too attached to them, and too much trouble to care for.

That was about a year ago. The last time I saw her, she was about seven months pregnant with her second child.

I don’t know if she ever found anyone to take the cat. For all I know, she may have simply abandoned it like the many others who do so.

Too many people treat owning a pet as a substitute for having a child. I treat my Paco and Mina, and Pedro when he was alive, as my children, but I don’t see them as substitutes. If I ever had a human child, my dogs would be equally (if not even more) deserving of the same care and attention they had before. After all, animals have limited resources for fighting back. They can’t tell you that they hurt, or they’re hungry, or that they’re lonely. Sure, they can cry, but you can ignore them, because society doesn’t really give a damn if you abandon your pets or neglect them.

Animals are much like small children. They depend on you for food, warmth, comfort, and love. But they don’t grow up, and will never grow up.

Unlike animals, children grow up. They learn to talk, to think, to make their own decisions. If you’ve done your job right, your child will leave you eventually. Their independence is a sign of your success at parenting. Parents compete over who has the most successful child, because a successful child means a successful parent, and a successful parent is someone praised. And if you choose to have a child, you should be prepared for the sacrifices you’ll need to make in order to raise it well. If you don’t raise it well, there are governmental structures in place to criticize you or take the child away from you.

Raising an animal well is not judged by the same criteria. A pet cannot learn to become independent and survive without you, and to leave you. If you own a pet, you will always need to be responsible for them by making the right decisions for them. To make things even more difficult, there are very few people who will praise you for successfully raising your pets, and very few to criticize you if you fail. You can choose to be a good owner, or choose to be a bad owner, and no one is watching to be sure you make the right choice.

If only people could learn, and raise their children to understand, that owning an animal is something you do for yourself. It’s a reflection of who you are, deep inside. Don’t expect any applause if you make the right choice and raise your pets well, because you know what? If you’ve chosen to own a pet and to take on this responsibility, you damn well should raise it well, which means you’re responsible for it during its entire lifetime. If you’re unwilling or unable to take on that burden, stay out of the pet stores, stay away from the shelters, refuse that free kitty, and don’t do it.

If what you really want is a human child, don’t ever get a pet as a placeholder until the “real” child comes along. If you have no problems abandoning a pet when it becomes inconvenient for you, then don’t get a pet at all. Would you ever consider dumping your second child on the street because he cries when you go to the store, or trading in your gawky adolescent for a shining fresh baby? Because this happens every day, every second, to a cat or dog somewhere.

Posted by: ssjane | August 29, 2001 | 5:02 pm
Posted in: Rants