#oneaday Day 145: The love of a good cat

Apologies for last night’s bleakness. Not entirely sure what came over me. I think it was just the fact I turned the TV on to watch something while I was having something to eat and I was immediately confronted by a “Dell AI” advert that… didn’t advertise anything whatsoever. But anyway. That was then, and this is now, and now I am back from my overnight stay and monthly visit to the office, and I have been welcomed home by my wife and cats.

My wife is jealous of how much our cats love me. And not just our current two; I was clearly favoured by both Ruby and Meg also. I haven’t particularly done anything special to make any of them favour me in particular, but I can confirm that both Oliver and Patti have been all over me ever since I returned home.

And it’s nice. There is something wonderful about the completely (well, mostly) unconditional love you feel from an animal. Both Oliver and Patti simply like being with me. We don’t have to be doing anything “together”; they both just like to be in the same room as me, knowing that I’m nearby, and that if they feel like jumping on me to harass me for some attention and/or treats, I’m right there, nice and convenient.

I’d always known that having a cat around was a genuine joy. I grew up with two of the most wonderful cats you ever could imagine, for starters, and I still miss them both dearly. I have doubtless told this story many times before, but our first cat Penny was very much my “nursemaid” when I was very little, and as I grew up I felt very close to her.

After Penny passed on peacefully one night, it wasn’t long before my family decided that we didn’t want to be without a cat, and so Kitty (we didn’t name her) joined us. She was a wonderful bundle of joy who loved nothing more than jumping into your lap and lying down, regardless of if you were trying to do anything. Sadly she left us, well before her time, after an accident in the road outside our house.

I still think of both Penny and Kitty, and love them both dearly.

And having pets of my own has brought me immeasurable amounts of joy. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have been blessed with such wonderful pets consistently — though the fact that every pet I have had has turned out to be such a wonderful companion makes me wonder if the way you nurture them as their carer has as much impact on their overall personality as their general nature. If so, that hopefully says something positive about me.

The only thing I wish is that I’d explored the possibility of having my own pets sooner in my adult life than I did; right from when Andie and I first adopted a pair of rats because we thought it might be fun up until the fussy little mogs who are currently adorning various surfaces in my living room, pet ownership has been a wonderful thing.

There are challenges, of course, and it is sad when you have to say goodbye to a beloved pet. But the possibility of those sad times in the future should never take away from the amount of joy pets can bring you. And, as with Penny and Kitty, the pets we have lost over the years are still with me in their own way, too. Willow, Lara, Lucy, Socks, Clover, Ruby, Meg… I will never forget any of them.

Pets are wonderful companions, excellent listeners and never judge you. And now, I cannot imagine ever being without them.

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#oneaday Day 40: The Cat’s Routine

One of our cats, Patti, is very set in her ways, to a degree that I don’t think I’ve seen in any other cat. She has Her Routine, and we must adhere to Her Routine, otherwise she gets very shouty at us.

The Routine begins anywhere between 5am and 8am with her telling me (not my wife) to wake up. This is accomplished through a combination of standing on me, yelling at me and tapping me with her paw, inevitably with just enough claw extended to make it slightly painful, and inevitably somewhere that you really don’t want a claw, such as my eyelid or lip.

Once I am up, she will continue to yell at me until I go downstairs and put some biscuits in her bowl, which she may or may not deign to eat. Around this time, I must also provide Oliver, the other cat, with some wet food, because he likes wet food and is a growing boy. (Patti should not have wet food, because she tends to throw it up almost immediately. She often ends up eating Oliver’s leftovers, which is usually fine for her apparently delicate digestion to cope with.)

After this breakfast routine is done with, she will almost certainly disappear somewhere in the house for a significant portion of the day. It might be on the windowsill in our bedroom, it might be behind my desk in my study, it might be under my chair in my study, it might be on “her” stool in the spare bedroom. We do not know what she is up to during these hours, but we have determined that if she does not wish to be found, she will not be found. On more than one occasion this has caused a mild panic.

At some point during the day, she will emerge from wherever she was hiding and start hassling me at my desk. This usually takes the form of sitting between my legs and occasionally clawing my knees and thighs. To date, I have not determined what, if anything, she actually wants when this part of The Routine is unfolding. Sometimes she wants a refill of her glass of water — oh yes, both cats refuse to drink out of their water bowls and instead prefer to have a glass left for them: one in the living room, one on the upstairs landing — and sometimes she wants attention. Sometimes I swear she’s just doing it to be annoying.

At some point between 10pm and 11pm, she will decide that it is time for bed. If we are in the hallway, she will attempt to lead us up the stairs. If we are not making any movements that look like they might conclude in the bedroom, she will hassle me (not my wife) repeatedly until I comply with The Routine.

Once in the bedroom, she will sit in Patti Spot on the corner of the bed, usually getting slightly in the way but not enough for me to want to move her, and sleep there for most of the night. Sometimes she will disappear for a while during the night — often to go and eat — but she is usually there in the morning, ready for The Routine to begin anew.

As set in her ways as she is, I could probably learn something from her. And, given that she’s in the “yelling at me to go to bed” stage, that’s probably what I should go and do.

#oneaday Day 24: I Love My Cats

As probably already very apparent from numerous previous posts, I love my cats. Having cats is one of the greatest pleasures of my adult life. Yes, even when they do this. Of course, it is always heartbreaking when you have to say goodbye, particularly when that parting comes far too soon, but that heartbreak is a sign of all the wonderful times you shared together.

So today I am going to share my cats, because why the hell not.

This is Patti:

And this is Oliver:

Both of them have very strong personalities. We’ve not known Oliver for that long in the grand scheme of things, since we got him a little while after Meg left us, but he’s already settled in very well and is extremely comfortable here.

Patti, meanwhile, has always been a very nervous cat and I suspect she always will be, but she’s very happy when she can spend time with just us. She doesn’t like strangers and she doesn’t like changes to the routine; she likes life to be normal, straightforward and free of surprises. I can relate.

Patti, we suspect, didn’t have the best start to life. All we knew when we got her from a local rescue was that she had been “abandoned” by her previous owner, but we didn’t know the circumstances surrounding that. Surprisingly, she took very well to us almost immediately, but it was also very apparent that she hadn’t really had anyone to teach her how to “cat” properly. There were certain things she’d do that were just a little bit “off” from how most cats do things — she didn’t struggle with anything, as such, but she just behaved like she’d never really been able to quite finish her initial socialisation process.

And given her background, that was understandable. When we got her, she was a tiny little thing. We suspect she was younger than the shelter thought she was, because she’s grown a lot since those days. And while she occasionally plays up a bit due to lingering stress (or possibly even trauma) she is the most lovely thing, and a delight to have around.

Oliver, meanwhile, came to us in a somewhat different way. After Meg passed, we gave it a little while to see how Patti coped, but it felt like she wanted some company, and we both missed the company of having two cats around the house. Unfortunately, post-COVID it had become very difficult to add an additional cat to an existing household in our circumstances; whereas pre-2020 you could go in to the shelter, meet the various cats who were there and talk with the people who ran the place, post-COVID you had to submit a written application and you couldn’t just show up and negotiate or explain your personal circumstances.

As such, my wife Andie decided to look for private sales. We saw a few possibilities, but got slightly bad vibes from one, so we politely excused ourselves from that situation. Then a suitable-looking candidate came up, but by the time Andie enquired, he had already been sold to someone. We were becoming a little frustrated by the situation, but we kept looking.

Two weeks later, Andie saw a familiar-looking cat listed. He had a different name, but he definitely looked familiar. We enquired about him, and indeed it seemed like the present owner had only bought him two weeks previously; unfortunately, she had discovered in that time that she was allergic to cats, so regretfully had to let him go. This time around, we were able to secure him and bring him home.

For the first couple of weeks, he was a pain. Constantly yowling from the other room, being a little aggressively dominant towards Patti, and worst of all, pissing on everything. We knew he hadn’t been neutered before picking him up, but we didn’t realise quite what a problem that could be, particularly with another cat in the house. As a priority, we made arrangements for him to have the snip and just stuck things out until then. We also made sure Patti got plenty of love and attention during this time.

Thankfully, after he was “done”, Oliver became a thoroughly lovely cat. He’s very friendly — though he hasn’t quite graduated to Patti’s level of “bed cuddles” yet — and extremely curious. He’s also a cheeky little bugger; on more than one occasion we’ve caught him fishing food packets out of the bin, and he stole and ripped open a bag of treats on one occasion, too. He likes to eat.

Patti very much wasn’t sure about him at first. She’d keep her distance, hiss and growl at him. But over time, her reaction to him softened somewhat. She’d allow him to approach a little more before hissing, and the growling stopped. Eventually, the hissing stopped, too (unless he does something to really piss her off) and now the two seem to be actual friends, which is wonderfully heartwarming to see.

Patti and Meg got along, but Meg was always a grumpy cat — she even had a note on her vet’s file that she was uncooperative and angry — and as such, despite clearly liking Patti (she’d come looking for her if she didn’t know where she was) she’d keep her a bit at arm’s length. Patti and Oliver are, I think, becoming quite close; there’s still a bit of mistrust on Patti’s part for entirely understandable reasons, but Oliver has always wanted to be her friend, and that hasn’t changed even with his horny bits being removed.

I love them both very much, just as I still love Meg, Ruby and my childhood cats Kitty and Penny. The cats I have known will forever be a precious part of my family, and those who are no longer with us will always have a place in my heart.

#oneaday Day 13: Sleep, Interrupted

At approximately 4.30am this morning, my cat Patti was sick all over the bed. I am annoyed by this, not because of the sick — Patti is very good at being sick, and we have come to accept this as just part of who she is — but because it interrupted what was, I’m pretty sure, one of the best nights of sleep I’ve had for a very long time.

Seriously. It was an unusually good night’s sleep. So much so that when I awoke to the inimitable sound of a cat being sick — if you know, you know — my first thought was not “oh God, she’s being sick” but “damn, that was an unusually good night’s sleep”. Closely followed by a frantic attempt to get Patti off the bed before she erupted, but sadly I was a little too late.

Rather than start a load of laundry in the middle of the night or sleep beneath a vomit-covered duvet, I instead went to hopefully continue that good night’s sleep in the spare bedroom. My wife didn’t wake up throughout any of this, I hasten to add, and the sick was enough on my side of the bed that I didn’t think she’d accidentally come into contact with it while she slept, so I left her to it. She told me this morning that she woke up for a wee, was briefly confused by my absence and then accidentally put her hand right in it, after which she immediately understood why I had gone elsewhere.

As it happened, I did manage to get back to sleep surprisingly quickly, and while I didn’t feel like getting up early today, I did feel quite refreshed when I did finally rouse myself. I had an interesting dream, too; I was visiting my old clarinet teacher from childhood, who had installed himself in a much bigger, nicer house than back when I really knew him. I recall complimenting him on his house and the huge plants he had in carefully labelled glass pots in his front garden, and him laughing that I thought he’d still be in the place I last saw him nearly 30 years ago. I woke up shortly afterwards.

Anyway, the reason I feel having a good night’s sleep is worth commenting on is not just because it’s already late in the afternoon and I haven’t thought of anything to write, but because I’ve struggled for a long time with getting to sleep. But last night it just seemed to come nice and easily. Perhaps it’s the exercise. Perhaps it was the warm milk. Perhaps it was the two episodes of Deep Space Nine. Perhaps it was a little of all of the above. But I hope I can make a habit of that.

Attempting to process some bad news

You’ll hopefully indulge me for a while, as we had some devastating news today: our beloved cat Meg appears to have liver cancer, and there’s nothing we or the vet are able to do about it aside from attempt to make her feel comfortable and loved for the immediate future.

Meg is just shy of 12 years of age, and neither Andie nor I are ready to say goodbye to her. She’s been such an important part of our lives for so long at this point that I’ve been hit very hard by the sorrow of knowing that our time together is coming to an end. I won’t speak for Andie, because she doubtless has her own feelings on the matter, but I can at least talk through how I’m feeling in an attempt to process the situation.

A bit of background for those curious: we’ve had Meg since she was about 2 or 3 years old. She was a rescue cat, but she and her companion Ruby hadn’t been mistreated or anything like that; they’d simply been put up for adoption because someone in their former home turned out to be allergic to cats. We fell in love with both of them almost immediately, and they joined our family in 2016.

Ruby, sadly, had an accident in 2018 and left us well before her time, and Meg was clearly hit hard by the situation; she was clearly pining for the company of another cat. We suspect (though we’ve never known for sure) that Ruby may have been her kitten, which made the situation doubly sad. But we decided quickly to adopt another cat, both because we enjoyed having two cats around and we didn’t want Meg to be sad. And so Patti, a nervous little black cat who had something of a troubled start to her life from the sound of things, joined us.

The relationship between the pair was initially somewhat cautious. Despite being a complete scaredy-cat (no pun intended), Patti had a habit of launching herself towards Meg at high velocity when she first arrived, making Meg a little uneasy about her. Over time, they came to tolerate one another, though, and while I know Meg would never admit it, I’m pretty sure they even came to like one another.

We knew something was wrong with Meg a few months back when we noticed she was looking obviously skinnier than she had ever done, and, taking her to the vet, it seemed that she had indeed lost rather a lot of weight. She had a blood test that came back without any real indication that anything was wrong, ruling out common causes of sudden weight loss such as hyperthyroidism and diabetes, but we were still a little concerned.

It took a couple more appointments, including today’s, where she was put under general anaesthetic and examined thoroughly, to discover what was actually wrong with her. And now we’re kind of at a loss. We don’t want to lose Meg, but we also don’t want her to suffer.

At present, she’s actually doing reasonably well considering the circumstances, but she hasn’t been eating as much as she has done in the past, which accounts for the weight loss. And, realistically, things are not going to get any better from here. But we’re not ready to say goodbye just yet, so we’ve got some medicine to hopefully make her feel a bit better for now, and we’ll have to see what happens from there.

I don’t know if I want to say that death scares me, because I’m not sure that it’s death itself that scares me. It’s more the knowledge that I do not handle grief well at all, and the difficulty I have in picturing a life without someone or something that has been such a major fixture in it for so long.

Meg is such a precious, loved part of our family that even contemplating moving forward without her is enough to bring tears to my eyes. And the prospect of telling someone else “yes, it’s time for her to die,” as you regrettably often have to do with pets, is near-inconceivable. I don’t know if I can do it. But it’s also not fair to lumber Andie with everything.

Part of my brain knows, rationally, that all lives come to an end, and often a lot sooner than we would like, particularly when animals are concerned. That same part of my brain knows that it is the right thing to do to just let her go when simply existing is too difficult or painful for her. But another part of my brain says “what right do I have to decide that for her?”

I think part of why I have so much difficulty dealing with and processing this sort of thing is that there are no answers. There is no “right way” to handle it. There is no person you can go to for help and get everything resolved neatly and without pain. There is just that period of grief, pain and sadness awaiting, and I unfortunately know from past experience that when you’re in the middle of it, it sometimes doesn’t feel like you’ll ever be able to break out again.

This is what scares me. I know that I will be completely devastated with grief for quite some time when it is finally Meg’s time to pass on. And I can’t help but worry about how I will cope when something even worse happens in the future. Because I know it will, one day. Hopefully not for a good long while yet, but it will.

The things I’m feeling are not, I suspect, unique to me by any means. But it’s difficult to talk about them, which means it’s difficult to find a suitable outlet to express and process the storm of emotions that situations like this bring to one’s mind. I have been in floods of tears off and on all day, and I don’t know what else I can do. Because there probably isn’t anything else I can do.

Writing those feelings down is as good a solution as any for now, then, I guess. At least then I can look back on them after the fact and perhaps learn something from them — and hopefully those close to me will also have a better understanding about how I’m feeling and why I’m struggling.

In the meantime, Meg is now home and doing as well as can be expected. She’s just had something to eat, as she hasn’t had anything since last night, and I’m sure she just wants to get some rest now. She will be loved for however much time we have left together, and anything beyond that we’ll just have to deal with as it happens.

The Cat and the Human.

She had loved that cat. Adored her. At times I’d even joked that she loved her more than me. I knew that wasn’t the case, of course, but it seemed like the feeling between her and the cat was mutual.

I didn’t mind for the most part, of course. I loved the cat, too, and I always appreciated any time she came and sat in the chair in my office while I was working. I knew that her priority was sitting somewhere comfortable and warm rather than necessarily enjoying my company, but it was nice to feel like she wanted to be in the same room as me now and again.

Now her real master was gone, though, and she was left with just me, forever second-best. I could see the sadness in her eyes. I could see it in the dejected-looking way that she sat on her cat tree. I could see it in the way that she just didn’t seem to have the energy she once did.

The cat’s obvious sadness made me feel miserable, too. It was an uncomfortable reminder of past times of joy, never to be repeated. Once we had been a family of sorts, always together, always sharing in the wonders of life. Now we were just a man and his cat.

And yet, at some point, I don’t know when… we bonded more than we ever had done. Our shared grief brought us together. Just as I recognised how the cat was suffering from her absence, so too did the cat recognise that it had hit me hard, too. And slowly, little by little, completely wordlessly, our relationship began to change.

I remember the first night it happened. I was lying in the bed which now felt entirely too large for me, tossing and turning, struggling to get to sleep. Suddenly, I felt something; a weight on the bed. And I heard something: a soft purring. In the dark, I could just make out the shape of the cat. She had come to see me in the night; she never used to do this, usually preferring to sleep in her comfy cat bed downstairs in the living room.

But now she was here, purring softly in my ear. She headbutted my outstretched hand until I began to pet her, and she rubbed her face on my hand as I tickled her cheeks and chin.

Then, she sat down. It was a decisive move, a declaration. She managed to mould herself so that she fit perfectly into the curve of my arm that was extended across the empty half of the bed, and quickly curled up, ready to fall asleep. Her soft fur felt good against my arm, and I felt a sense of relaxation wash over me — a feeling that I hadn’t really been able to enjoy for some time now.

From thereon, I had that feeling every night. Things were going to be all right, in their own strange way.

She loved me, too. This cat loved me. Perhaps it had taken our shared loss for her to really feel like she could show it, but I was left in no doubt whatsoever.

Neither of us wanted to be alone. And now, neither of us would be alone.

Please do not worry about me, everything is fine and this is not an autobiographical blog post! The above is a piece of creative writing following the prompt “A human and a cat who come to some sort of mutual understanding.”

2510: Cats

I haven’t talked much about our two cats since we got them a while back, so as a break from all the Final Fantasy XV (it’s pretty much all I’ve done today to enjoy a much-needed day off) I may as well talk about them a bit.

Our cats Ruby and Meg very obviously had established personalities when we first got them. Initially we were led to believe by the people at the animal shelter that Meg, the slightly older one (and possibly the mother of Ruby, we’re not sure) was shy and hesitant to trust, but she’s emphatically proven that to not be the case since she’s settled in. Now she’s the most vocal of the two of them, making it abundantly clear when it is dinner time, but I also think of her as the more “mature” one of the two, since when she comes for some fuss she sits down and just chills out, perhaps even dozes off. That said, she does have a tendency to dribble if she’s particularly happy, which I wish she wouldn’t.

Ruby, meanwhile, is a very active cat. She likes to come and bug you for fuss, and if you provide fuss, then she won’t sit still. She likes to demonstrate her enthusiasm for fuss by walking back and forth over you with no regard for your personal space or anything you happen to be doing at the time. Heaven forbid you have a controller or phone in your hand at the time, because if you do and Ruby wants fuss, the thing in your hand is getting headbutted until you pay attention to her.

Ruby also has a thing about licking people, which was initially weird but is something we’ve just learned to sort of tune out. Of course, to a visitor, getting licked by a cat would probably still be weird, but it’s just what she does. I can’t quite work out why she does it, whether it’s an attempt to wash us or just because something on our hands tastes good, but, well, it seems to be a habit that is already in place and, since it’s not doing anyone any harm, I’m certainly not going to try and train her out of it.

I’m grateful for the cats’ company, because they seem to appreciate us being around. I really enjoyed having the rats to sit and watch and talk to while they were still alive, and I get the same feeling from the cats. The difference is that the cats are a bit more communicative than the rats were (though all our rats were most certainly very much aware of us and knew how to look cute in order to extract treats from us) and a lot more independent. The latter aspect in particular makes it all the more pleasing when they choose to come and spend time with us; they want our company and enjoy our company, and that’s a nice feeling, even if they sometimes decide to express that at inconvenient times.

Pets are great. I loved having a cat growing up and I missed having animal companions in the years since leaving home before we finally tried our hand at keeping rats and eventually our long-awaited cats. Ruby and Meg will hopefully be with us for many years to come just yet; they’re very much part of the “family” now and it’s getting hard to imagine how our previous life was without them.

2508: The Cough of an Eighty Year Old Man

I am ill.

I do not like being ill, because it is annoying and painful, particularly when it is that particular breed of “ill” somewhere between a cold and flu that causes you to feel constantly stuffed up and occasionally cough like an eighty year old smoker. Also I have the shits.

It is not a pleasant day to be ill, either. Andie’s phone claimed it was -7C outside earlier and while I tend to take phone weather readings with a pinch of salt, the fact that it is still visibly frosty outside leads me to believe that yes, it certainly is at least a bit cold out there. Meg the cat certainly let me know that it was cold when I let her in just now.

I have spent the morning in bed accompanied by one or both of our cats at all times. I’m always amazed at quite how well cats understand people; they know exactly when you’re not feeling great, whether it’s physically, mentally or both, and they know that what you often need in such situations is company and affection. Ruby, who is typically the more irritating of our two cats, rather fond of walking across your face when you’re trying to do something, sat with me quietly and peacefully for most of the morning, even curling up and settling down for a bit, which is rather rare to see her do.

I’m up now and craving nothing more than “ill person food”. Specifically, I’m feeling a steak slice, nice crisps (Walkers Max!) and some chocolate might help with the doldrums of being ill, accompanied by plenty of Lemsip, of course.

This is a singularly tedious blog post, I’m aware, as there are few things more boring than listening to someone else talk about how ill they are — I’ve heard enough complaints from my parents about my grandmother having such conversations with them to know this all too well — but, well, it’s something to do now that I appear to have exhausted my capacity for lying in bed wheezing all morning. Now I am on the couch beneath a blanket like a homeless person while Andie puts up the Christmas tree and decorations, because now it’s December, it is an acceptable time to do so.

Time to dose up on drugs and steak slices, I think, and hopefully I’ll feel a bit better tomorrow.

2379: Two Cats

0379_001

After the sad departure of Clover a little while back, it wasn’t long before Andie and I decided that it was far too quiet in the house without a pet around. It was surprising quite how much “presence” Clover and her predecessors had had in the house, and indeed it felt rather empty without her.

So it was that we headed off to the Stubbington Ark, a local RSPCA-run animal shelter, where we went “just for a look” at the cats they had up for adoption.

Naturally, we immediately found not one but two cats that we wanted to take home with us, and so we decided to set things in motion sooner rather than later. A couple of days later, a representative from the RSPCA was sniffing around our house to make sure we weren’t some sort of cat-killing psychopaths, and thankfully we got the all-clear; then yesterday, we got to pick up our new friends and listen to them howling at us from inside the cat carrier while we drove them home.

This is Ruby:

ruby

And this is Meg, which we’ve decided is actually short for Megatron. (If we were able to name our own cats, we were going to call them Patrick Stewart and Megatron, but Ruby and Meg both already had names, so Meg will just have to deal with being an effeminate Megatron on occasion.)

meg

They’ve both settled in very well, very quickly. The spare room is now “their” room, so far as they’re concerned, and they’re already finding the best places to sit and be in the way as much as possible.

We also had the inevitable “new pet scare” on the very first day we had them; Meg managed to jump out of a window that was only open a crack, and went for a little explore outside. Thankfully, she came back of her own accord after a few minutes, and we’re now sweltering in a house with no open windows while they get fully accustomed to their new home. It’s a rite of passage with every new pet that something like that has to happen, it seems; when we got Lucy rat she decided to pretend to be dead ten minutes after we got her home, which was mildly upsetting (though in retrospect it was probably to try and get Lara off her back, because Lara was fussing over her to a ridiculous degree); and pretty much all of the other rats managed to escape their cage quite early in their time with us and hide under various items of furniture.

So yes. We now have cats. Friendly cats. If you visit us, be prepared for that!

#oneaday Day 904: Furry

We’ve had our pet rats for a little while now and they’re both starting to get a bit more confident. Willow, the shy one, has grown significantly more than her sister Lara, making it quite an amusing sight when they play-fight in the evenings.

One thing I find with all animals is that I can’t help but anthropomorphise them. They are little people to me, even though I know they can’t understand the things I’m saying and that the cute little nibbling thing they do on your finger isn’t necessarily a sign of affection — it’s more likely them determining whether or not I’m something they can eat.

This means I do silly things like talk to animals. I talk to cats. I talk to dogs. And I talk to our rats, even though they probably find those freakishly huge giants who keep dropping treats into their home utterly terrifying.

I can’t help it. I don’t know why I talk to them when I know they can’t understand me. But I do. I say their names, hoping that they’ll learn them. I hope that they’ll come when I call them. When they do do something, it’s easy to assume that it’s because I did something to encourage them. If I say their name and they jump on the side of the cage to climb up and see me, it feels like “I did that” even though it’s probably just coincidence. (I know that you can train a lot of animals to respond to their names and to come when you call them, and that rats are surprisingly intelligent little furballs, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that they are responding to me and coming to see what I’m doing.)

I guess this sense of attachment I feel to pets, and the assumption that they are somehow “little people” rather than “not particularly intelligent bundles of fluff”, is what makes them good companions and nice things to have around. And animals certainly do have their own personalities — our two rats have clearly defined character traits, and the two cats who have been a part of my family in the past both also acted in their own unique ways. The two cats who live next door to Andie and I now, too, are both their own “people”, though they are both united in their desire to get into our house as often as possible. (They haven’t succeeded since we got our new sofa, and are being kept well away now we have the rats, too!)

The downside of seeing pets as “little people”, of course — and I apologise for getting maudlin here — is that it makes it hard to deal with when they pass on. I recall feeling genuine grief — like, the sort of grief you feel when an actual person dies — when both our family cats died. One such outpouring of said grief can be found here, from the early days of this blog.

But let’s not focus on sad things. We have pets now, and they are great. They are becoming much more confident, too, so soon we might even be able to actually take them out of the cage, pet them and play with them. They’re still a bit too jumpy for that just yet — Andie’s had a couple of bites just from trying to pick them up — but they seem to be learning that the Big Scary Things who keep opening their cage are actually sources of Treats rather than things to be feared.

We have thus far resisted the urge to fill Facebook with rat pictures in the same way people with new babies incessantly fill Facebook with baby pictures (please don’t change your profile pic to your baby, it’s creepy) but I’m sure that will change as they get happier and more at ease with us. So you can look forward to that.