On Pets

“All things bright and beautiful

All creatures great and small

All things wise and wonderful

The Lord God made them all”

~ ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’, lyrics by Cecil Francis Alexander

Lyrics first published in 1848

When WonderWoman and I married, I became the father of a small black and white feline named Sparkle.  As WonderWoman had Sparkle before we met, I had no say in the name.  More’s the pity, because it’s pretty lame.  Naming pets is fraught with difficulty.  Does one pick a pet name, like Rex or Spot or (God forbid) Sparkle?  Or go for a ‘human’ name like Max or Sam or Milly?  They have similar problems at the zoo, especially when some adorable new critter is born out of a breeding program.  For reasons escaping all sensibility, they always pick a foreign name that Australians can barely pronounce because it’s got five syllables, no vowels, and three silent P’s.  If the damned orangutan was born in Australia, just call him Kevin or Bruce or Wayne and be done with it!

But back to the cat.  I didn’t pick the name, but the animal is pretty sweet.

Sparkle, like most cats, can be very affectionate but only at those times of her choosing.  Those times usually defy predictability.  For the most part, though, she loves her daddy.  She’s not a lap cat, but loves to rub against legs, and if you’re sitting on the floor, she’ll lean into you, pressing her small frame lovingly against your body.  What I love most is her vocabulary.  She has all manner of squeaks and squawks.  We sometimes nick-name her ‘the meow-ow’ due to her penchant for extending her cat-cries to multiple syllables.   She has quite the set of lungs, and can extend one meow longer than any cat I’ve ever heard.  When you address her directly, she often answers directly.

While I was growing up our home had several pet cats, each different from the last.  The third was pure white with an incisor that sat out of his mouth just so.  We had to colour his ears black with permanent marker in the summer to prevent sunburn, and you can just imagine how ecstatic he was about that particular process.  Because he simply wasn’t quite odd enough, my brother, in a fit of subversion, named him Phydeaux.  One of my favourite childhood photos has Phydeaux perched contentedly on my lap.

At age twelve, I scored my first dog.  A scruffy beast, I named her Scrappy after Scooby-Doo’s rambunctious nephew, Scrappy-Doo.  She was everything a dog ought to be: friendly, loyal, and exuberant in her affection.  She loved to chase and fetch, and adored chasing the wild rabbits among the brambles near our local oval, despite the futility of the exercise.  Once, I threw a yellow tennis ball to a blind corner of the back yard for Scrappy to fetch.  She zoomed after it in all haste, only to return with a small lemon fallen from a tree near where I threw the ball.  She returned it clenched firmly in her jaws, but seemed almost relieved to be rid of it, the sour juice on her tongue proving a less than pleasant taste.

A precious memory of Scrappy is the sight of her snout sticking through one of the triangular gaps in the large driveway gate at my mother’s house.  She would stick her nose out whenever I came home, a greeting I never tired of.

When she was ten, and I twenty-two, she became ill, and after a short period of illness, she needed to be euthanised.  Anyone who has lost a pet knows the heartbreak of it, but like most, I can say with absolute certainty that the wonderful years together (all of my formative teenage years at that) were well worth the expensive vet bills, and the sadness of her death.

Studies have shown that pet ownership has significant physical and psychological benefits.  Animals, mainly dogs, have even been used as therapy for the elderly, infirm and unwell.  My advice to you, dear reader, is go and give your pet a friendly cuddle (unless it’s a puffer fish or a particularly nervous rodent or something).  If you don’t have a pet, go and get yourself a fluffy moggy, or a joyful cavoodle, or a clown fish or a parrot or an octopus or a frill-necked lizard.  Look after it, respect it, love it and learn from it.  You’ll not regret it, even if it has a terribly feeble name.

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