Posted by
Ed Lilly on Sunday, July 19, 2009 10:15:35 PM
When I started this blog [Note - this was originally written for posting at the Miss Otis blog site], I named it after our beloved family dog, Otis. Unfortunately, she is no longer with us. (Wait, you named a girl Otis? - ed. Yes, I named a female dog Otis, but that’s another story for another day.) But we were luck to have her for 16 years, she was a sweet, sweet girl and we loved her very much. It’s been almost two years since she died, and I still can’t find the words to express how much I miss her every day.
Our kids are old enough that they remember Otis, and they are starting to make more and more noise about getting another pet. Unfortunately, they’ve started pushing for a cat.
For months now we’ve been having occasional discussions with Jordan about her intense, little girl dream of getting a cat. “Mommy and daddy are really not ‘cat’ people, honey,” we explain. “We’ve never had a cat, and have always had dogs. And right now we’re not really sure we have enough time to raise a puppy and give it all of the attention and love that a dog needs.”
Round and round it goes, with Jordan managing to get acknowledgments from us that a cat would not be as burdensome from the standpoint of time and monitoring like a puppy. And then, heading into the Independence Day weekend, Christine shocked me by asking, out of the earshot of the kids, if maybe we should go to the animal shelter and see about getting a cat.
Again we went back and forth, but eventually our thinking was that Jordan would be an excellent pet owner, and she really loves animals, so maybe this would make sense. So, on the Friday before Independence Day, we took a family trip to the Princeton animal shelter to find out about adopting a kitten.
It turned out that there were 3 kittens at the shelter, with another 20 or more on the way from a recent cat-hoarding discovery. All the rest of the cats were full grown, but the kittens were all out of their cage and playing when we went in to visit.
After a lengthy discussion with one of the shelter volunteers, we made the decision to fill out an application to adopt the grey kitten with black stripes. All three kittens were domestic short hairs, and the other 2 were black and from the same litter.
On leaving the shelter that day, our understanding was that by early the following week, after our references had been checked, we would likely be making arrangements to pick up our new kitten.
But as we sat down to lunch at home after the animal shelter visit, Christine shocked me yet again by telling me that, if we were going to get one cat, maybe we should just get 2 so they would have each other for company. I half-joking asked if maybe we should just take all 3 of the kittens and be done with it, but Christine was serious, and after another discussion, I called the shelter and amended our application to request 2 kittens.
The kids, of course, were excited about all of this, and I was ok with our decision. Cats are not my thing, but I don’t dislike them. And if we had a cat or two in the house, I’m sure I would find some redeeming qualities to enjoy.
But by Sunday night following Independence Day, Christine was ready to surprise me again by telling me she was having really serious doubts about the entire “cat” concept. Never having had cats, we were both a little concerned about having a “cat odor” house. And Christine realized that with swim lessons, swim meets, and other things going on, she wasn’t even sure if there was an evening of the coming week when she would have time to pick up the cats from the shelter. So was it really a good idea to do this?
Then we had to consider the ramifications of telling the kids that, despite the shelter visit , application, adding a second cat, etc., we changed our minds and are now NOT getting a cat, much less 2 cats.
Heading into Monday we figured we had a little time to think things over and make a final decision. But when my cell phone rang at 9:10 a.m. and it was the shelter telling me our application had been approved and we could make arrangements to pick up the cats, I was in a little bit of a bind. So I told the lady at the shelter the truth - we’d been thinking very hard over the weekend about the whole thing, and I wasn’t really sure what our final decision was going to be. Perhaps that’s a not uncommon thing for animal shelters to deal with, for various reasons, as she seemed unfazed and told me to call them when we decided.
That night and the next morning, we talked things through again, and Christine did a nice job of easing the kids into the possibility of not getting a cat so that they were not on the verge of melting down if we decided that we should not get a cat.
And then on Tuesday, Christine called the shelter to tell them we changed our minds and were not going to be adopting a cat after all.
So all of this is good from Otis’ perspective as a dog, right? We’re still not cat people and life is good?
Largely, yes. But I was then greeted with Christine’s revelation that maybe the thing to do is to wait until the end of summer, after we’ve taken vacation, maybe even after school starts, and we adopt a puppy.
So now Christine’s unstoppable force of wanting a small, hypo-allergenic dog that won’t shed meets my immovable object of getting another “real” dog, with a solid “thump” to its chest when you pet it, and that’s large enough to pull a wagon or act as a horse for a 2 year old.
We’ll see where it all leads. If there is such a thing as a 30-35 pound non-shedding dog that has a tail and doesn’t have long fur/hair that requires grooming beyond basic and occasional brushing, I’d sure like to have that in my back pocket as a bargaining position. Maybe I better start doing some research....