All My Pets

Some days I feel like the "Old woman who lived in the shoe". It is not because I have so many children I do not know what do, but rather that I have so many pets, six to be exact. My husband claims that he left for work one morning and returned home to find a rescue shelter in place of our living room.

According to studies, pets do not judge or criticize us. Really? I have been a pet owner for most of my life and I beg to differ. I have certainly detected disapproval on my pets' faces. This usually comes after a particularly amorous evening with my husband that they have been witness to (as if I invited them to watch). In the morning when I step out of the shower and into the bedroom, they are all lined up outside the bathroom door. They watch in amazement as I try to get dressed for the day. I know that I have heard the sound "eww" when my back was turned. Why do I feel the need to apologize to them anyway? It is not my fault I do not have the rock hard body of a 20 year old anymore.

Yet another study suggests that pets offer us unconditional love. I believe they were speaking of dogs. Have you ever known a cat that did not have a list of conditions?

Our lone dog Buddy is surrounded everywhere he goes by cats he pretends not to see. He exercises his dominance by placing his milk bone in the middle of the room and daring the others to go near it. He eats whatever I put in front of him but the cats make their particular food choices on an hourly basis. If I took all of the cat food I have thrown away in the past 19 years and placed the cans end to end they would circle around the world 92 times.

There are water bowls everywhere, yet they prefer to drink out of the sink. I have spent a fortune on cat trees and pet beds but they choose to sleep with us instead. The first thing we do in the morning is pull the cat hair out of our mouths. In lieu of a scarf and belt, my current choice of accessories has become a cat brush and a sticky roller.

Despite all of this, I could not imagine life without them. They offer us hours of joy and entertainment. Besides, unlike children, my pets will never grow up and call me a lousy mother (their mouths move, they just haven't learned how to form words yet). They will never put me in an old folks' home and then ignore me (even if they could, years of cat ownership have already primed me for that one).

Just recently, I have had to seriously ask myself if any of them will actually outlive us. As I write this story, my husband is currently in the kitchen teaching several of them how to use a can opener, just in case.