whats your perfect pet
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
What’s the perfect pet?
When I was smaller we didn’t really have any pets because my parents were struggling enough to pay the bills and put food on the table without having to pay for vet fees and pet food.
I do have a memory though of a small kitten being in the house that we kept in the porch and then one day it wasn’t there. When I asked my mum where it was, she said it managed to escape through the letter box. I still don’t know to this day what happened but I remember I wasn’t bothered in any way.
We then got some gold fish but they are so easy to look after, although they do seem to die pretty easy, but they are not a pet you can get affectionate with.
I used to be scared of dogs too. One of my friends had a couple of dogs that her family kept locked up outside the house, more of a protection than a pet, and all they seemed to do was bark all the time. Very strange – so I didn’t warm to dogs at all.
Then when I moved in with a partner in my mid 20’s we decided to get a kitten. It wasn’t a pedigree or anything but it was a white normal moggy. We called him Lennox and he was so cute. He used to sit on my lap and I used to blink at him and then he would copy and then fall asleep. It was like having a baby but without giving birth. Yes I know, I’m weird.
He was such an affectionate cat and he was so much fun. All the neighbours loved him and he was a showman. If we used to go out the front door and Lennox was still in the house and he didn’t come out with us, he would then quickly run out the back door and run round the side and come out to the front where we were and then run up a tree as if to say “look at me, don’t go out I’m cute”.
Lennox also had the cheek to get into my bed and actually slip under the covers and put his head on the pillow. My late father used to come round to do a few jobs for me and he would look for Lennox and he used to roar with laughter when he saw him snuggled up in bed like a human.
There was also another time when my neighbour came knocking on my door as the newspaper boy was having trouble cos he had some sort of trolley to deliver the newspapers and Lennox had jumped into the trolley and wouldn’t get out. One of my neighbours who loved Lennox had tried to get him out but he was acting like a dead horse and wouldn’t let anyone get him out. So the poor newspaper boy was pulling him along with the newspapers. What a cutie hey.
We then decided to buy Lennox a play mate and brought Pebbles who was a pedigree kitten – a Turkish Van. She was a little cutie and as soon as we brought her home, she was acting like she had been there all her life and if it was as if Lennox was the intruder. It was so funny. She would sit on my lap all proud and just stare at Lennox. There was a lot of hissing and puffing for a couple of weeks but then they became very friendly. We brought one cat bed and they would both sleep in it together. They would play together – it was so cute. Then tragedy struck. One day I had been playing with Pebbles and then she went outside, then within 10 minutes she was back and was crying. She dragged herself upstairs and hid under the bed. So we went to see her and her leg was covered in blood. We took her to the vet and unfortunately she had to have her leg amputated. I was devastated but it didn’t take Pebbles any time to get over it. The funny thing was, Lennox used to just sit back and stare at her, as if to say “what the hell has happened to you?”, as obviously she was hopping and walking differently to Lennox. It wasn’t long before they were playing together as normal.
I used to come back from work and go in the house and then I would hear Lennox meow outside the front door so he must have seen me and followed me in. So I would let him in. And then a few seconds later, Pebbles was meowing at the door and I had to let her in. So it was as if they were together playing somewhere and saw I was home and ran to the house, but Pebbles couldn’t run as fast as Lennox – bless.
The two of them definitely brought me a lot of happiness.
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