What animals make the best/worst pets?
When you connect more lives to the one you are living, things change, maybe for the best or for the worst, but things certainly don’t remain the same. Even the smallest thing can remain for the longest time, subconsciously occupying that minute space in your mind.
A few months back, one of my late maternal grandmother’s friends, Mrs Atwal told me how fond she used to be of her flowering plants every flowering season in the first apartment she lived in when she came to the city. Her apartment in one of the top floors of the building had a view of a highway running by in front and the flowers caught the eyes of many passing. But a day of heartbreak arrived when one flowering season a small girl of a guest, unknowingly and innocently of course, plucked most of the flowers and sight changed quite a bit.
“One of the worst feelings I have felt,” Mrs Atwal had said. Although not as much as before in life, plants still are part of Mrs Atwal’s life.
So, like I said, things end up shining under a different light when you connect with more lives around.
I haven’t had pets all my life. I did run around with a street dog or two in childhood, and my late paternal grandfather would get really angry about it, in fear of all the ways those germs could harm me. There were more birds when the development was less, and I think that’s the worst trade off ever of the present time. Squirrels ran around stopping to sense a thing or two, the occasional cat quietly walked by after making a brief eye contact if it thought you had noticed. Aquariums were a common attraction in many houses, and people got really creative with it.
I wanted to have a pet, but my parents were apprehensive about it, we were a nuclear family and nuclear families have a lot on their plate, this is something I realised as I grew up. But pets did arrive as if it was meant to be, the first time around we had my uncle’s pet dog for a while when my uncle was settling in another city. When my uncle finally took the dog away, in a moment of sadness we realised ‘we need a dog’, and henceforth there was always a dog in the house, our second one in the present.
The later additions were the two goldfishes and along with the aquarium. So, the three of them, one quite different from the other two, are the pets of the house, but we call and consider them a family. All three of them are part of our daily lives and interacting with them is a form of unique emotional exchange. For me they are the best in the world.
By the worst pet, what I understand is that an animal is not suitable to be a pet. They cannot bond with humans in the same way like a dog or a cat. They are better suited to the open nature in the wild.
But honestly when someone told me his dog was the worst. I wasn’t looking at the dog but the owner instead with that reference.
What I would advise though is, before making a pet a part of your life, do your research, go online you will find a good amount of information there; especially focus on the challenges and understand if that’s something you and your immediate family will be happy to deal with.
In the end, pets can be the most illuminating part of your life and your family, if you can understand their presence in your life and it can be one of the best feelings in the world.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 