Pets – If luvin them is wrong, then I don’t wanna be wrong

Who wears a tie with pajamas, anyway?

Pets – If luvin them is wrong, then I don’t wanna be wrong

I just returned home from an eight day trip to India, and, as usual, my Border collie greeted me with sincere enthusiasm.  She is usually so excited when I return from a trip that she looks like she is having a seizure.  (I often have that effect on women). Whenever I am gone for an extended trip overseas, or even to the hardware store, she goes nuts when I come home.  I guess a person can’t say that’s a bad thing. For years my daughters made a game of who could kiss me hello first when I returned from work each day.   I loved the attention, but it was evident that this game became less and less about showing me affection and more about sibling competition.  This was in the early days of video games, so I suspect they were pretending I was a space alien, being killed by their kisses.

At 2am this morning, one of our cats woke us up with her snarky, irritating meow.  She wanted food.  Or water, or nuclear disarmament of all western nations, or whatever.  We never know what she wants, but we can’t get her to stop waking us up.  She seems to have no concern about it being the middle of the night.  If I bought her a kitty wrist watch maybe she would she pay attention to the time?  I really don’t think she cares.  She wakes us up, which then wakes the dog, who wants to go out, and then will bark later to be let back in.  It is a nightly ritual that I don’t miss when out of town. 

Sometimes I think we are trapped in a come-to-life version of the Flintstones cartoons from the 1960’s.  The dog wants out, the cats want in, and there is continuous turmoil about which pet wants to be where.  I may have to give up wearing my leopard skin pajamas.  I don’t want to be seen wearing them outdoors as I pound on the door to wake up the wife after the dog locked me out of the house.

That old, crabby cat has always been crabby, so it is not an age thing.  She has been like this ever since we rescued her decades ago.  (Never do this).  All our pets are rescues, either from an animal shelter, or from being abandoned by someone smarter than us.  You’d think that these pets, after we take them in, clean them up, feed them and get them to the vet, would show some appreciation.  But no.  They just act like dogs, or cats, or goats*…. or whatever.  They owe us BIG, but you’d never know that by their attitude. 

We have another adopted dog, a Great Pyrenees, who is barking outside right now.  He was abandoned by someone who moved from a neighboring farm and so we started feeding him.  He is a very, very large dog, with long white-ish fur, a black nose and black eyes.  When I first saw him, slowly lumbering around in the pasture, I thought he was a polar bear.  But since free ranging Polar bears are not common in Texas I knew that was unlikely.  This dog spends most nights, trotting around in the woods, with his head to the ground, barking at nothing at all.  Apparently he thinks this is his job description. It gets very irritating and we are afraid either he will get shot by a neighbor or they will shoot us for saving him.

We moved out to the country about five years ago.  (It only seems like five decades ago) and the first country pets we inherited were some goats* that a friend of mine had too many of.  He lives in far west Texas and bought goats* to raise for meat.  He quickly realized that due to the romantic nature of goats* they soon multiplied.  The goats* were eating the grass down to the dirt, so he asked if we wanted to take some.  (That was a dumb question to ask my wife, the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler).  She is intellectually brilliant but somehow could not form the word NO when asked this question). So we drove out there (12 hours each way) and spent half a day chasing goats*.  We caught two lambs.  Lucky us.

I have included an (*) after the word goat, because these goats* were not goats* after all.  They turned out to be sheep.  Not that it matters what type of critter they are, since every pet is an animal that eats, poops, needs shelter, and needs their own vet.  I think we discovered the goat* mis-identification after one goat* started getting romantic with the other goat*.  Eventually a third goat* appeared as a result of the romantic encounters, if you know what I mean.  Well, time marches on.  We were given another free goat (no asterisk this time since it really was a goat) that was no longer wanted by someone who was raising show goats for the county fair.  We took in the spare goat.

My wife’s pet adoption attitude may have been the basis for an urban legend which was started to save parents from having to tell their kid that the family pet died.  Kids….if your mommy and daddy ever said they took your pet to out to the country to live on a farm…..it could have happened for real at our place.  My wife is the living embodiment of this urban legend, and I get stuck with the vet bills.  What’s wrong with this picture?

Anyway, I digress.  The spare show goat soon became the object of affection of that amorous ram (goat* or sheep? Now I am totally confused).  Well, he did what animals do in the barnyard and somehow managed to impregnate the real goat.  We took the real goat to the vet. He assured us that it was impossible for one species to impregnate another species.  But it happened.  (This might also explain the existence of Liberals?). This one ended as a miscarriage and, of course, a large veterinarian bill.  I told the vet, “Sir how dare you invoice us for an impossible medical condition?”  (Actually, that’s what I wanted to tell him that, but didn’t since I am a pet wimp.)

Another of our goat stories is more tragic.  When we lived in suburbia, one daughter wanted to raise show animals for the county fair.  This seemed like a harmless way to keep her out of jail, so we funded her activities for every year of her high school doing this. She raised show steers, and one year she raised a goat too.  (a real one).  I remember one night, she was out tending her animals, when I heard a commotion going on at the front door.  I look out the door’s window and see a goat’s head, complete with horns, staring back at me. I open the door and my daughter spilled into the house, carrying her goat that weighted nearly as much as she did.  She yelled that the goat was sick with a fever.  We helped her get the animal into the tub, where we iced it down to reduce its body temperature.  I am not sure of all the events that occurred with this but the goat, sadly, did not make it. 

I am sure that not many of you have been greeted at your front door by a sick goat needing to borrow you tub for a bath.  Or maybe you have.  That might explain why you are still reading my stories.

To summarize:  Do not purchase, rescue, or temporarily agree to shelter, any kind of pet, of any type, breed, or species, from anyone.  Just like the warnings announced in the airport:  do not accept packages from anyone you don’t know or do know.  If you ever do find yourself at a weak moment, about to agree to rescue an animal, immediately stop the process and mail me your wallet.  You can thank me later.  But not at 2am.  And not in person.  I don’t want you to see me, locked outside, in my leopard skin jammies.