How many times and ways is WordPress going to pose this question? This is the third time some variant of this question has popped up in the daily prompts… why?
Most people love dogs and I get it. Many love cats, including me so I get that too. But here’s the thing about beloved family cats and dogs;
Dogs: I’ve had three that were killed here on the rez by persons unknown over the past four years. My first dog, Ranger I got as a puppy when I was six and he got hit by a car when I was eleven, the same year my parents separated never to be in each other’s presence again.
Cats: Put simply, unless your cat is a permanent indoor pet then that cat has several families scattered across town. They come and go as they please and while that’s fine, domestic house cats are the most effective/active predators world wide and they kill simply for sport. True, rodents are pests and its a good thing that cats keep pest populations from exploding in some places but, for as clever and productive as they are most outdoor cats in this country are either skittish or feral.. and in my experience its always the mangy nasty cats with shit in the eyes and ass dreads and some sickness that want to come up and rub on you.
POI: Beloved family cats and dogs…. they gonna die. Maybe its old age, maybe its a random hit and run. Maybe its an old decrepit dog too loyal to die naturally and instead lives in agonizing pain until you personally end its suffering and bury it in the back yard. Maybe its a cat that just one day wanders off to find a place to die without saying goodbye. And maybe you’ve had them briefly, or maybe you’ve had them for more than a decade. The point being, they gonna die at some point and you’ll be broken-hearted. Your children will be devastated. You’ll carry the loss for a long damn time.
The best pets I’ve had have been reptiles; tortoises and pythons. As long as they have a warm spot and a steady food supply their content where they are. They don’t shit and piss on the carpet, they don’t chew up or scratch to shreds any furniture, and they only need to eat once or twice every few weeks. They don’t bark at the moon, the don’t make obnoxious asshole sing-songs in heat, they just chill. And Chinese box tortoises can live over two-hundred years; generational pets and as long as they are well cared for they’ll outlive multiple generations of a single family and they’re chill.