This column comes with a health warning: Readers of a sensitive disposition should be aware that I am unbearably smug and self-indulgent at the moment, as 3-year-old Goldilocks and 8-year-old Tweenager received offers of places at one of the UK’s top schools this week. Naturally, we’ve agreed, though it certainly now means we’ll have to ride bikes everywhere and live on baked beans for the foreseeable future. After seven years of island life in Cyprus, Busy Husband and I have decided to return home to the UK, back to non-stop rain, complaints and tepid tea. For my part, I can hardly wait, but that’s another story. Now that the euphoria has faded (a little), a slight panic has set in: there’s too much to do. There are also decisions to be made, and right now our lives revolve around the most important decision of all: pets. So much for being the cats that got the cream, now we’re dealing with the cat that got the microchip, C5 customs form, and a Snugrug (whatever) in a quarantine facility a million miles away from where we’ll be resettling. . But we love her, and so we must persevere.
The decision to take in our kitty has been a decidedly laborious one, riddled with emotional pitfalls. We have had tears, pleas and praise but, politicians take note, we have finally reached an agreement: the cat can come, but the dogs must stay. Oh. Having been forced to stare into the barrel that is quarantine, Busy Husband and I have steadfastly balked at the idea, and then felt extraordinarily guilty, years of those ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas’ ads ‘ strangling our consciences. Leaving Cyprus has forced us to face the fact that, gulp, we’re not really sure why we have pets. Moving to Cyprus is, for many, a trial by fire introduction to animal husbandry. He had never had a dog before coming here and was quite indifferent to our cats. A year after moving to the island, we had three dogs, all strays, all uninvited guests in our garden, all terribly abused. Kipper, the first, was two years old and still wearing the chain collar she’d been given as a puppy and hadn’t been removed or loosened since. Jack the Perfect Pointer came to our door at the end of a hunting season and fell in love with Kipper. Poor old Jack isn’t blessed in the machismo department and would probably rather manicure than kill, so the ‘manly’ hunters decided he was no use to them and went off in full combat gear to shoot him more. bullets. tiny birds
Pulling dogs. Isn’t that what we’re doing now? This is the question I face in the dead of night now that we have two dogs, Jack the Perfect Pointer and Holly the Lovely Labrador, who we simply cannot love enough to bring to England. I read a recent RSPCA study that looked at pet ownership and the reasons for buying a pet. A large percentage of those surveyed bought a pet ‘for their children’. Scroll down and you will see that the ‘primary caregiver’ of the pets is the respondent, i.e. definitely not the child the animal was purchased for in the first place. Many of us become convinced that it is important to have an animal in the house, for children, to somehow teach them a level of responsibility and maturity that they would seem to lack without copious amounts of dog poop to pick up. I know that Busy Husband and I have done it for the last seven years. In a futile attempt to please and edify the children, we have allowed all the Fido’s and Fifi’s who have come our way to stay and make themselves at home. Every exclamation of ‘But it’s so cute!’ it has tugged fiercely at the heart (and pocket) strings. As a result, we’ve come to expect too much of children and dogs alike – we don’t understand why children aren’t interested in the pup when the cute stage is past and gone and why those damn dogs don’t get along fine with them. Teach our children to be responsible animal lovers? And here’s the gap: parenting is about leading by example. If you constantly complain (as I did) about the smell/hair/poop/barking, your behavior will have two important consequences: your children will not learn to respect your pet as a member of the family or, as has happened in my house, your children decide who actually love the pet because of your lack of respect for it and think you’re a couple of selfish old men.
As with parenting, I think the best option here is to learn as much as you can from a representative. Other people’s mistakes can be very helpful. Our neighbors have four puppies that are kept in a cage and, by my calculations as a pet psychiatrist, they are insane. Helpful Lesson on Selfish Animal Breeding, Number 1. Number 2 comes in the form of a family we meet who, over the years, have experimented on various animals in their search for the Perfect Pet. Dog (crazy), rabbit (eaten), hamster (?) and now goat – your little boy clearly couldn’t care less. And why should you? Each temporary pet has had a definite lifespan (literally, it seems, in the case of the rabbit). Back to our pockets. Yes, we will have to leave them behind and yes, I will feel terrible doing so. But no, we will not throw them away, neither in a rescue center nor in a field. We will relocate them. Otherwise, it’s Plan B. Just don’t tell Busy Husband.