Pet’s – We Don’t…

Since I mentioned that Hood #4 was desperate for a penguin in The Week That Was – 11, I thought I would post a little Home Truth about pets.

We don’t have any.

Firstly I should mention that the Hoods hotly desire to own all sorts of beasties and creatures of the fury or slimy or feathery variety… But we have a rule… absolutely NO PETS until everyone is out of nappies/diapers. I do more than enough wiping and swiping. So they are all eagerly waiting for Hood #7 to grow up. I am in no hurry. No hurry at all.

I often have little hand drawn messages left on my keyboard… in the hopes that I will succumb… not a chance! But here are some smatterings:

I have first hand experience, call me battle scarred – I shared a bedroom with my sister and her accumulated pets…I could go on a diatribe: dogs need walking and poop scooping, cats well you need to change that tray, birds – there is seed spillage and the bigger the bird the bigger the splat, anything in tanks need scrubbing.

Pets are nice from far
and far from nice.

The father person and I did venture into pet country only once!!! About a month before Hood #1 was born our entire anti-natal class spontaneously and independently got themselves pets. Is this impending first child syndrome? or What?… Anyway, one couple got a pair of kittens – kittens make cats, which in turn make little kittens…; one couple bought two bouncy labrador pups – then they immigrated, without the dogs; one couple bought rabbits – yes, two little rabbits very quickly become lots of little rabbits…

Well we invested in a pair of goldfish, aptly named Mango and Pip… I ate fruit the entire pregnancy and Hood #1 is still a fruit bat. Needless to say within a day Pip had popped and we flushed him – and this did nothing to alay my parenting terrors… I have no idea what happened to Mango time has healed that memory – lets just say he was around long enough to have a whole jar of food on his head by an over eager toddler and beyond that I really can’t remember how he/she met his demise, I can only imagine it was old age – enough to say we have never ventured there again.

Apart from all that we do have lot of house guests… snakes by the many. Bugs a plenty. Creepy crawlies. A scattering of scorpions. The odd bird invasion. Moles. Field mice that very occasionally venture inside and don’t believe the expression “as quiet as a mouse” – its a myth… we keep absolutely all our food in sealed bins… I cannot keep track of the miles of delights that my children leave out for them… I do however insist: if you are not at the table you have to eat outside… hopefully this will stem the flow of little beasties and leave them outdoors.

When we moved into our house and Hoods #2 was only slightly verbal… he kept saying “woof woof” to me – indicative of a four legged beast with a tail… and time after time I played the game with him… only to discover one evening that the “woof, woof” was indeed four-legged and it did indeed have a tail… it could not, would not bark because indeed it was a RAT – horrors… my heart still quakes in terror!!! And I have learnt to lend a closer ear to little people’s word games.

I know that I am hampering the little Hood’s development by not having countless real live creatures to cuddle, it is a developmental challenge I am happy to avoid and they can and do visit countless less fortunate friends, who are obviously happier about swiping and wiping than I am.

And, while I am not prepared to entertain pets I can and do provide them with an endless string of siblings and hopefully this will provide them with the opportunity to develop the necessary nuturing skills required for adulthood.