© Celine Sparks, 2023
There’s gotta be a better word for them. I’m not sure how the term pets caught on, as if these animals that invade your home have the sole purpose of being affectionately patted on the head and tummy-rubbed, and then the petter is free to go on with the rest of her life.
They could have called them eats. This is because you can’t really enjoy your food once you have one because the polite ones look at you with an expression that evokes more sympathy from you than the last few minutes of Old Yeller. The less polite ones just devour the entire menu for twelve, all six courses, when you turn your back to retrieve the Cool Whip from the fridge. Most of them say, “Oh, I’ll take that, too.”
They also could have called them sheds. It would probably cut down on the number of places that let you bring them. What if all the signs at the hotels and airbnb’s said, “Sheds welcome” or “We are a shed-friendly facility.” Yeah, pets sounds better, but sheds sounds truer.
I find it pretty incredible that people will pay upwards of $200 for a fuzzy sweater. Get an eat and all your sweaters will be fuzzy. I should have invested in lint brushes in my early twenties instead of in America Online - whole ‘nother article.
I mean, the angora goat has a pretty good racket going on. Tell me, who else can eat ninety percent of your possessions including the car, and then turn around and make $800 every time he shaves or sheds, and call it mohair (as if that were even an attractive name)? I’m not into it. To me, they’re called sweaters for a reason.
But I do want a goat. It’s no secret. I do. I talk about it only second to wanting a professional mopper. And in fact, could I get a twofer? Don’t goats lick up spills and stepped-on Cocoa Puffs? I hear they’re good at it.
And I’m thinking it’s a lot more fun to go to town with a goat than with a cock-a-poo. What; It might be more ordinary than you think. I went in a shop in Fayetteville, Tennessee a while back, and there was a goat just walking around in there with a diaper on, as if it were as normal as a Sun Drop sitting next to a bag of sunflower seeds, which in Fayetteville, is not only common, but required. It was like he was gonna pick out a bath bomb and some earrings, put them on the counter, and pay for them with mohair.
Yep, I want a goat, but the HOA frowns on it, so I got a cat. I mean, that’s the planned animal I have. He’s supposed to take care of the unplanned ones, the pets you don’t know you have, who are also pretty notorious eats. Doc, the cat, does a good job, I mean, as far as I know. We haven’t had any mice in years, probably because I scared them away by yelling so loud. It was kind of a contest about who was going to die first.
“I’m going to have an immediate heart attack because I saw you!” Scream of death!
“No, I’m going to die first. You screamed so loud it stopped my tiny, frail heart!”
“Help! I’m dying because I jumped up here on the table, and I don’t think it’s going to hold up under this kind of pressure!”
“Here! Let me run around in a panic, and die of exertion, not to mention disorientation.”
Second scream of death! “Just when I think you’ve disappeared under the counter, you reappear under the door. Pretty sure I have officially given up the ghost.”
Yeah, that was when we lived in Mississippi -- the good ol’ days when your whole life could flash before you every time the tractor in the field next to you sent the mice running for their lives into your quarters. Little did they know they were in less dangerous territory under the blade of a John Deere then with the crazy lady on the table waving the broom like a Samurai sword.
I don’t want those for pets. I know some people who do want them for pets, and they name them and feed them and buy them ferris wheels. Aaand there’s probably a special table in the asylum for those people.
At my table, I’ll just be downing sunflower seeds and a Sun Drop next to a pet that eats and sheds, but if I’m extra good, can I have the kind that goes into a store in a diaper?
Commenti