AT HOME: Pets and Other Animals
Admiring the love people naturally have for animals
By Loraine Page
COLUMNIST
Taking care of an animal's needs seems to spark a deep love in our hearts.
Pets, whether they are common (dogs and cats), or slightly less common (birds, fish, assorted rodents and reptiles, mammals like ferrets and hedgehogs), trigger a nurturing gene.
I live with a cat. Boo Boo and I have been housemates, just the two of us, for about five years. We are able to communicate now almost flawlessly, we know each other's habits, and once in a while—when she is feeling needy—we snuggle.
I have a penpal who writes me pages and pages about her assorted pets, which I picture skittering about in her house to her utter delight.
Carole lives in a village on the South Coast of England, which, in order to orient me, she says is closer to the French Coast than it is to London. She lives on the farm she was born and raised on.
Carole is late middle-aged and single. Her husband tragically died when they were in their 20’s and had only been married for a year. She is now a caretaker for her aging mother.
Her joy is in animals of all types. At home, she has two white Lionhead rabbit sisters, which she describes as "little bundles of fluff," and seven cats. What with regular and emergency vet visits and an ornery cat who keeps trying to grab a rabbit, she is kept busy.
Outside her front window, a pair of wood pigeons have perched on her fence for a number of years. She has watched as Romeo and Juliet, who nest in the nearby tree, raised young ones.
Her feelings for this couple run deep, as if they were her own birds.
One day I received news. A hawk had swooped down and taken Romeo. He was gone. Juliet was shaken. Juliet was bereft. Juliet was eternally sad.
"She just mopes around," Carole wrote. "If I call her she comes down and I put bird seed on my conservatory roof for her. Other males have been hanging around but she drives them away."
A couple of months later, I get another letter—and this one is cheery. "Juliet pigeon has a new mate," Carole declared. "The new guy I have named Montague. He is young, and not as attentive as old Romeo was, but at least she is not alone."
Carole goes on about her cat and rabbit news. One of the rabbit sisters had minor surgery but she is okay. And I breathe a sigh of relief that all is well in the south of England.
Closer to home, I think back to when my granddaughter Lisey, now a teen, was a young girl in love with all animals. She and her family are now proud owners of two black cats and a black-and-white dog. Back then, though, she wanted a pet of her very own.
Specifically, she desired a betta fish. Knowing her, she would take on the task with great seriousness—and great love.
Godrick arrived in a box. He was delivered by FedEx. An unusual way for a fish to present himself, but he was here and if all went well, Lisey would open the box and find him healthy. (And it did go well.)
She took the precious box upstairs, where a carefully prepared tank, situated next to her bed, awaited him. Betta fish are known for their vibrant color and flamboyant appendages, and Godrick was no exception. He was bright orange-red with a pair of fancy fins.
His tank had been painstakingly decorated, Lisey having begged for more than a few trips to the pet shop and gone through several changes of mind before the perfect decor style was decided upon.
She couldn't wait to see her gorgeous boy swimming around in his new home.
Unfortunately, Godrick was not much of a swimmer. He was more of a nestler behind an artificial log on the bottom of the tank. Occasionally, her boy would take a swim. And he could be counted on to swim upward when he saw food being sprinkled.
But Lisey loved him anyway. Her caretaking was exceptional, as expected, and Godrick did live a long life, for an aquarium fish.
When he died, I think it shocked her.
She wouldn't talk about it. Eventually, she was able to visit a pet store again. This time she wanted aquarium shrimp. She took good care of them, but I could see that they never replaced Godrick in her heart.
A love for animals in the wild offers at least some detachment, though it's not completely without heartache.
There is a woman who runs a channel on YouTube called "Squirrels at the Window." We who follow her don't know her name or where she lives. All we see at the site is an open window where squirrels come by to feast on free nuts—nuts of all kinds, with each squirrel preferring one type of nut over another. Sometimes peanut butter is available too.
We don't hear her voice. Instead, single lines of text appear on the screen. For instance, when I tuned in recently, I saw a squirrel eating nuts and gabbing away as she ate. A line appeared saying "Ellie the squirrel is telling me all her problems today."
Occasionally, we will hear, sadly, that so-and-so squirrel has not been around for a few months. She hopes, and we hope along with her, that nothing bad has befallen that squirrel. Though, most likely it has.
But we love when Cutie, the woman's favorite, shows up. We hear her voice then because she can't contain her joy. "Here comes Cutie!" she trills. And, for a moment, Cutie is our favorite too.
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