You could say my unfortunate track record with pets began in the cradle. At the time of my birth my Hungarian parents had a dachshund named Herr Doktor (because of the serious expression he always wore), or Doki for short. He was very put out by my arrival, as I received much of the attention previously afforded to him, and because my fastidious mother wouldn’t allow him into the nursery. So he upped sticks and moved in with the family next door. But as Doki was unfamiliar with the terrain there, one day he darted on to their driveway at the wrong moment and was run over and killed. While I obviously wasn’t to blame for Doki’s sad demise, I did play a role in it. And in time the incident seemed to fit into a pattern in my life.
While I am no Francis of Assisi, neither am I short on compassion for animals. Take the case of my cat, Mitzi. I was ten years old (and now living in suburban New York) when a classmate said her cat had had a litter and anyone who wanted a kitten could choose one. Out of curiosity I went to inspect the mewling bunch. There were five shiny kittens full of playful spirit, plus a smaller, scrawny one: the proverbial ‘runt of the litter’. Too weak to compete with the others for a teat, it would soon perish, my classmate explained with a shrug. ‘That’s how it goes.’
My heartstrings were well and truly tugged. I took the runt home and with my mother’s help nurtured her into a healthy, glossy feline, much cosseted by the family. But two years later we moved abroad. The new owner of our house, a warehouse manager, agreed to take Mitzi, but to our dismay we later heard that he moved the cat out of the comfortable family home and into his cold and draughty warehouse, to act as mouser. A horrible fate for which Mitzi was wholly unsuited, and I doubt she could have lasted long.
My next pet was a yellow canary. I encouraged it to sing by playing it birdsong records (available from the pet shop), treated it to honeyed seed sticks and cuttlebone, and furnished its cage with swings, bells, perches and a little birdbath. It was happy. But one day, while the paper liner at the bottom of the cage was being changed, it flew through the open cage door and straight out the kitchen window. I searched the neighbourhood for hours looking for it, but in vain.
Many years later my second foray into birdkeeping also ended badly. I had a blue budgie which I sometimes let fly around the kitchen, because by then I’d begun to doubt the ethics of keeping our feathered friends caged up. On one such occasion it flew behind the big ancient boiler and seemed unable to fly back out again. It flapped around for ages until, exhausted, it settled on the floor behind the boiler, totally out of reach. It was on the verge of expiring when I hit upon an ingenious idea for its rescue. I put double-sided sticky tape on the tip of a broom handle, which I lowered down on to the budgie’s back, thereby lifting it straight up. With a sigh of relief I returned the poor thing to its cage. But I guess the trauma had been too great, because within a week it was lying feet up – an ‘ex-budgie’, as that Monty Python sketch would have it.
I guess the trauma had been too great, because within a week the budgie was lying feet up – an ‘ex-budgie’, as that Monty Python sketch would have it
Then came the misadventures with amphibians and reptiles. When my son Nick was nine years old he asked for a pet. With our home empty all day – the kids at school and me full-time at the office – it had to be something requiring minimum pampering. First he chose a pair of tree frogs, which lived in a terrarium. They ate live crickets, which came in a plastic container with holes in it. Once, when the container wasn’t closed properly, there was a mass break-out and the crickets fled into wall crevices from where they chirped all night long for weeks. And then, some time later… disaster. I noticed that the frogs weren’t moving, that they were in fact quite desiccated. Nick was away on holiday and I guess I was too preoccupied with earning my living as a hard-working single mum to pay much attention to them. They developed some mysterious ailment and went to meet their maker. (Nick still hasn’t forgiven me and he’s in his forties now.)
His next pet was a grass snake. But after a few months it too made a bid for freedom. How it escaped the terrarium I can’t recall, but one day it simply disappeared. Where did it go? About a fortnight later, when we thought it had vanished for good, I was relaxing in the bath, only for the snake to streak across the bathroom floor and scare me half to death. And with that last dramatic appearance, it was gone.
I could tell you about the sluggish salamander we fed on pre-killed baby mice (returned to the pet shop for being ‘too difficult’), our untrainable Vizsla (given away to a couple in the country) and a few other ill-starred pets we once owned. But by now you get the picture.
Still, as a singleton, I’ve been feeling a bit broody these days. Perhaps it’s time I got a pet again? Some cuddly creature to watch telly with of a winter’s evening. I just don’t know whether to risk it once more, or give the animal kingdom a break…
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