Potential New Pet

Lately I've had animals on my mind more and more - and I think I might be ready to own a pet here pretty soon. As of now, I am leaning towards getting a cat, although I'm not ruling out a small or medium-sized dog at this point. But I have to look at the accommodations I can provide. Obviously I have a big enough house since it's just me living here. But I am gone pretty frequently to work - so the animal would be by itself for long periods of time. Plus, I like to take trips home to my parents' house often, so if I had a dog, I'd have to take it with me. A cat, however, can pretty much fend for itself. Which is why I am leaning towards getting a cat.

Growing up, we've owned plenty of pets as a family. We had countless number of cats and a few dogs - and if you include goldfish, we've had lots of them, too. For the most part, we never had any of those animals stay inside the house. The cats stayed in the house during the daytime and we'd let them out at night. That's probably why we were never able to keep a cat around for very long. The longest we were able to have a cat around the house was six years - otherwise they either got ran over by cars from the nearby highway or they disappeared, probably taken by foxes, hawks or coyotes. As for our dogs, my dad had built a doghouse for our first dog. I don't remember much about our first dog because we got him when I was pretty young and unfortunately, he got hit by a car and died. He was a collie; a gorgeous breed of dog. The only real memory I have of that dog is when we had a water sprinkler running, he'd be chasing after the streams of water that flew around. We'd have to compete with a dog to run through the sprinkler on those hot days. Still, a collie is a beautiful dog and it was unfortunate we weren't able to keep him around for a long longer.

Our other dog is one I wrote about before - but it's been quite awhile since I discussed him. His name was Spike and he was a mutt mix. We honestly weren't sure the kind of breeds he was comprised of - but we're sure he had cocker spaniel in him. He, too, was hit by a car when he was a year old, but luckily he survived. Although I don't believe he was ever the same afterwords - but he lived to be a very old dog when we had to put him down - 12. Our family had plenty of adventures with that dog while he was alive. I was probably about nine years old when we got him and at the end of his life, I was 21. That's a substantial amount of years to have a pet, so you can imagine how hard it was to make the decision to put him down. But, sometimes you have to make those decisions and move on. It's a simple reality to being a pet owner; you have to take great care of an animal in order for it to survive. That means feeding it, giving it water, providing it shelter, and bringing it to a vet when it needs care. And when an animal is terminally ill, the decision needs to be made to have it put down. I know that's not going to be easy with any pet, but it's going to have to be done sooner or later.

So there are a lot of things to consider when owning a pet. I know I'll still be pondering whether or not I'm ready for a pet at this stage of my life. It's only a matter of when and not if now. It probably won't be right away yet - maybe more this fall. However, I know if I keep looking at the local humane society pages, that decision may come a lot sooner than planned. There are a lot of great looking pets that need a home! And the last thing I want to see is an animal put down because nobody wants it. I guess that would be an incredible struggle to deal with for those working at an animal shelter. As for me, you'll definitely know when I bring that pet home and when that time comes, I'm sure there'll be plenty of stories to tell about it in the future.