a few thoughts on pets

first off, i do not like the idea of ownership in general and owning another living being is, well, somewhat irrational and highly unnatural to me... living beings are free, within spacial and social limitations, and caging one in the cages we humans call homes or apartments just does not feel right for me... when i owned a home and could put in small doors within doors, i did have a dog living with me (a friend asked me to take care of a stray she found because she {the friend} had other animals and she (the dog) was way too feral to integrate into her (the friend) family... happy (the legal name i gave the dog... yes. there is a pattern there) was quite a challenge to, as i cringe using the word, domesticate, but we became family and she lived several happy years with me (and more with a family in toronto, though her street years left her health not so good and she died relatively young, maybe ten or eleven or so... she was a beagle-fox terrier mix, feisty, skittish, nippy, and quite happy with me as lead dog)... i also cared for a raccoon that a friend decided to adopt in an apartment... i built a 960 cubic food cage in my garage until i convinced him (the friend) that racoons really belong free in the wild... he (the racoon) eventually made a home in the wetlands behind my house and occasionally brought his family back for a visit... and there other animals and birds and were fish and other living beings in my care over the years, but my choice remains to not intentionally adopt an animal for many reasons...

anyway, as i said in the next entry, jackson's friend rescued a tabby kitten she found and is domesticating it, apparently taking case of all of the health costs and potty training needs and such and jackson wants to adopt her (the kitten, not the friend)... this is what got me thinking about caring for animals, my personal relationships with animals, and pets...

and while i am pretty sure jackson will care for the litter box regularly (except when she is away visiting family, which is at least several times a year) even though we don't have a really good place for it in this apartment... we discussed where to put the litter box tonight and i offered a couple of alternatives to her small bathroom and she will think on it... we did not discuss costs... i cover some of the vet costs for happiness already (a couple of hundred or so every few months) and any pet, even a healthy kitten, requires vet costs... she can barely cover food costs most months... that is the third reason i do not have a pet, keeping costs down...

another thought is feeding... with two animals, keeping each from eating the other's food can be a challenge... happiness has been known to eat cat poop (jackson says she needs to get a covered litter box) and will likely eat any food left out for the cat, so that means no way we can leave food out for the cat... with happiness on a special diet (hill's kd... don't get me started), that means even more supervision at feeding times... and that means more daily responsibilities that brings us home more (costing more gas, time, and preventing some activities)... and that is the second reason i don't have a pet, i do not want daily responsibilities requiring me to be home on a specific daily schedule every single day...

the first reason i don't have a pet is not nearly as selfish as the other two... as i said earlier, is the concept of ownership of another living being... whether it is my imagination (as some might believe) or my ability to be empathic, i hear animals, especially when they look me in the eyes... most animals read body language very well... perhaps that is what i do... when my spine is aligned and i am in my most aware physical state, communication is simple and fluid... i am not necessarily there most of the time these days, but i still hear animals well enough for pretty good communication most of the time... rarely do i find an animal in a home or apartment that is not beaten down psychologically simply because the instinct to run free in the wild has to be suppressed and repressed and, well, damaged... and especially for social or pack animals, the social instincts (with it's own species) must be equally beaten down (and yes, i use that language because within the mind, that is the process, constant, repetitive, denial in various ways)... most people don't get it, but i know this...

removing the animal's ability to reproduce and cuttings it's claws or sometimes tails, alas, that is so accepted it is painfully part of the human psyche but like other things humans do and consider natural or right (war, for instance, or any of the human suicidal habits), i can only nod and move along on those most of the time...

anyway, for the moment, these are my thoughts on pets...