Pet Diary

Do they still have pet stores in shopping malls? I haven't been inside a mall in so long I've almost forgotten what they contain, except for pet shoppes and cookie eateries.

I'm a dog guy, myself. I grew up with dogs and like to rough-house with them. It's the only way I know how to be with a dog. I'm not a lap dog kind of guy. No yip-yip for me.

Funny thing is that I married a cat person. So, being the easy-going guy I am, I've lived with a woman and cats for the past 22+ years. The past 10 years the cats have been two males, with whom I like to rough-house, at least as much as you can with a cat. So today I have scars on my arms, chest and back from playing with the cats. I put on an adhesive bandage in the wee hours of the morning when I realized I was bleeding on my night shirt.

But I digress.

As I sat on the chair by the bedroom window while putting on socks and shoes a little while ago, I thought about the comfort that pets give us. They don't really talk, not with human language, anyway. But they do communicate with us, letting us know their basic needs and giving us their undivided attention (my cats are like dogs - they follow me around the house and want my attention, unlike cats you see in movies or comic strips that ignore their feeders/home providers). Pets are surrogate humans, no more or less human than computerized surrogate humans. I certainly get a lot of the human-type body-to-body need taken care of by playing with animals. I guess that's why nursing homes and other long-term assisted living facilities request the visit of animals, to provide the type of body contact and face time that an animal gives you without all the misread body signals that human-to-human contact brings.

I had a series of dreams last night. In one series, the face of an artist friend of mine appeared in front of my eyes like a mask, stepping into my personal space. I said, "Excuse me," and she said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I see you're busy. I can wait." And her face disappeared from my view. A few dreams later, I was standing inside the booth of part of an antique show that was visiting a shopping mall. I looked over to see the artist friend of mine patiently sitting on one of the tile walls that malls seem to have. I waved at her and she waved back, motioning me to ignore her and pay attention to some of my customers. I quickly forgot she was there. After some time passed, I felt someone standing next to me. I turned to see it was my artist friend. I apologized for forgetting about her and she acted like it was normal. She reached over and hugged me, thanking me for giving her unexpected attention lately. I hugged her back, feeling guilty that she more greatly appreciated me for what little time I had given her than I felt like I had gotten back. She patted me on the back. I hugged her tightly and then let her go. She walked away and disappeared.

I woke up feeling that the artist friend was like a pet, completely happy with the attention she gets, always happy to see me no matter what mood I'm in or how I behave in response.

I then woke up from waking up to wonder if I was the pet in the dream. Is that what my furry friends think? That they ignore us just as quickly as they notice us, wondering why we hug them and give them so much care and attention and suddenly disappear?

As usual, I completely woke up and realized my wife was asleep against my back, one cat was asleep in between us and one cat was asleep against my chest.

Meanwhile, I hear a few animals jumping around in the attic. Is it squirrels or raccoons who are playing with and chasing each other? Since birdseed has gotten too expensive for me to justify buying it, how long will suburban wildlife continue to live with us if they have to travel farther from here to forage for food?

I end this blog entry with these questions: How many of us are not only somebody's sex toy but also somebody's pet? And why do we act that way? Have we been conditioned to accept body love as the only attention that matters? Or are we simply just loving animals who happen to use our brains for idle thinking sometimes, and any kind of attention will do? Being social animals, what's the smallest amount of attention we can live with and be happy?