Pets in the City

If you have a pet, you have a child. You have a baby child that is unable to converse with you - though it may appear so at times when dogs moan something that sounds like 'I love you' or when birds repeat things - and that baby child needs you, its mother, every single day. It's probably because you, fellow human, tore it away from its own mother. Unless of course you adopted it. Regardless, I believe pets require more blood, sweat and tears than tiny humans.

Take, for example, my parrot, Dorian. I have had him for almost two years now. I was gifted him on my twenty-first birthday, when he was a savage little black-beaked bag of feathers - now, he remains savage, but has grown both in size, strength and intellect. At the time, we thought him to be a female, so we named him Dora after Dora the Explorer, because he simply loved to explore foreign regions which weren't his cage: the kitchen, the curtains, the curtain stand, the top of the fridge, the back of the fridge, under the fridge, the three bathroom mirrors, the bedroom mirrors, everywhere. That was until we had to pluck some feathers near his butt which were over four centimetres long, and send them off to the DNA lab. Thus, Dory was made. And now he is Dorian because Dory is too cute of a name to use when you are telling off a psychopathic critter with Houdini-level sneaking skills.

As I type this, he is imitating a bat's call to acquire my attention, because he senses my presence in the study, the room near his aviary. This certain bat passes over our home each night, and my child has captured and mastered its call, and repeats it with an agitated squawk at the end of it to imply how serious he is about being angry with me for leaving him alone for too long - two minutes too long, most of the time. I have less time to myself now, not because I have a boyfriend, not because I have a job, not because I need to clean the house, but because I have a pet. A domesticated pet, which is the subject of which I have reaped. I have sowed wanting a pet parrot, and now, I reap. But it isn't all too bad, I suppose.

Pets bring positivity into human life. They can offer elderly, adolescent and pre-pubescent companionship. They fill in peoples lives when their lives have gaping holes of freedom and isolation, and thanks for our creation of smartphones, they mostly are the reasons as to why most social media has gained popularity. They teach humans responsibility. Going to the supermarket? Do not, and I repeat, do not forget to buy your cat Tabitha her can of Fish and Chicken cat food. Otherwise, you will wake up with strange claw marks all over your body. Having a nice big juicy roast for dinner while your dog Rufus has to eat last night's leftovers? Do not worry, he'll be on your lap in no time. Just make sure you give him 60% of your roast if you wish to live.

On another positive note, if you do not have anybody to come home to, it would pay off to have a needy pet cat who prefers your undying constant affection so long as you constantly stroke its soft spots and satisfy it enough to make it purr loudly and ruthlessly claw at your sensitive thighs. It will welcome you home with loud meows and affectionate leg rubs, leaving you to clean off its clinging fur from your  only washed pair of black work pants that you have to wear tomorrow and the day after until the weekend.

Pets are needy. Pets require a lot of attention and love and time and food and exercise and showers and shampoo and their food and yours. Pets will ruin your shoes. Pets will ruin your curtains. Pets will fornicate with your plush toys and legs. Pets will deploy faeces in the corners of your house that you forget to clean that very moment before your in-laws come over for dinner. But most importantly, pets will shine an everlasting gleam in your heart which slices through the dismay and loneliness that occupies it.