Over the course of my adult life, I've been the owner/servant of several fish, rabbits, ferrets, and a cat. I started with a rabbit, which my boyfriend at the time thought would make a great birthday gift.
Don't give rabbits as gifts
A rabbit is probably one of the worst gifts you can give someone in college, in case you were wondering how that worked out. My roommates were less than thrilled with his ability to nibble on everything in sight and scatter his little rabbit poops everywhere. I was informed that the rabbit was male, and there are no health reasons for getting male rabbits neutered, so I never took him to the vet. When he died under mysterious circumstances a scant few years later, I learned that he was actually a she. I was renting a room at the time, in the city, and didn't have any friends who owned land, and suddenly here I was with a dead rabbit in need of burial. Did I mention that it was cold out, and that I didn't own so much as a trowel?
Don't buy betta fish
Concurrent with the rabbit, I attempted to rescue several fish from the pet store, but after accidentally killing two in a row, I've sworn off fish forever. Fish are blessedly easy to "bury."
Don't adopt street cats
After the fish, the husband (who was not the husband at the time) and I found a kitten in a trash can. We liberated him, but he refused to leave the trash can and we had to drag him out. He is currently the insane diabetic cat that has been previously mentioned in this blog. This week he even ate through a bag of potatoes to gnaw on a potato; nothing is safe. He will eat clothing out of the laundry if it smells enough like food. And twice a day, I get to give him insulin, which after a year of playing with dosages is still not properly managing his diabetes.
Don't expect rabbits to behave
The husband and I adopted two rabbits. The first was a sweetheart, and very well behaved. But he got lonely so we let him pick a girlfriend (don't worry, they were both fixed). The girlfriend hated me. She also was a frequent nibbler - baseboards, books, cords, furniture. Our crib still bears her nibble marks. And she hated me, right up until she got cancer and I had to give her prednisolone twice a day for six months. Since she loved the medicine, she also wound up liking me, and when I had to put her to sleep the day before Easter, we were finally pals.
The other rabbit lived on, dying the slow death of old age, and had a seizure while we were away on vacation, so the poor person I had hired to watch over him had to see him over to the other side.
Don't be me
At some point, the husband also decided we should get ferrets. I was not a huge fan of this proposition, as they don't live very long. Case in point, the older ferret - a scant three years old - developed pancreatic tumors. After a week and a half of feeding the ferret special superfood every three hours and administering prednisolone twice a day, the ferret developed an ulcer. So on the morning of the biggest snowstorm of the year, I had to call around and find an open vet's office that could handle ferrets. Then we (ferret and I) drove through the snowstorm so that I could watch him curl up one last time and ease out of his misery.
When I returned from the vet, the baby was puzzled as to why the ferret was no longer in his carrier, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 asked when we could get another ferret. To which I replied, "We can get another pet when you're ready to put it to sleep."
I'm not anti-pet; I'm anti-dying pets
I probably won't win parent of the year for that response, but it's the truth. Pets die. Pets get long-term illnesses. Pets can be loving, and fun (not fish; fish are neither), but at the end of the day you just might wind up getting ferret blood on yourself as you take your poor little friend on a snowy car ride. And you'd better be prepared with a shovel and a plot of land, or a place to put his little box of ashes on your mantle.
I hope you have better luck with your pets than I do as a
-Real Housewife of the North Shore
