Pets is an anagram of pest. This revelation burst in upon me like the light of infinity while I was counting out three-hundred dollars in twenties for the nice lady behind the reception desk in the veterinarian’s office. Three-hundred bucks would make a nice pot in a poker game. It would also pay for a new iPod, a night on the town or three hundred assorted items off the McDonald’s value menu. Instead, I was plunking it down to cover the cost of surgery for my cat.
We had taken him to the vet because he had what appeared to be a big blood blister on his ear. After a half-minute examination — which, based on the fee for the appointment worked out to two dollars per second — the vet announced that the cat had a hematoma on his pinna.
“What is that in layman’s terms?” I asked.
“Sort of like a big blood blister on his ear. It won’t go away on its own. We’ll need to operate.”
Oh. Good. The vet had a solution and all it was going to cost me was money.
Which is why I was contemplating the fun fact that pets and pest contained exactly the same letters. (For that matter, so do step and TPES, but neither of those is funny so we’ll forget about them and move on.)
I forked over the cash, dropped off the cat, and went home to see if any of my other pets had damaged themselves in some costly and amusing fashion while I was out.
Our home-based menagerie includes the cat, a chinchilla and a cockatiel. I am not so much homeowner as landlord to a collection of critters. I earn the money that keeps them housed indoors, fed and cared for by the vet. I clean their cages, litter boxes, and food dishes. I feed them and bathe them. I provide for their entertainment.
Did I say landlord? More like parent or nursemaid.
They repay me by eating the food I serve when the mood strikes them, dirtying their cages/litter boxes, ignoring the toys I provide and occasionally manifesting strange illnesses or bizarre injuries for my amusement and impoverishment.
For all of that effort, you’d think my pets would be of some use to me. Couldn’t they earn their keep by maybe cleaning up after themselves once in a while or maybe waxing the car or moving by barbells down from the attic? In terms of usefulness, where do pets rate? Above in-laws? Below tax assessors? I’m having trouble deciding.
My wife insists they enrich our lives. To which I say, has she met them?
The chinchilla is a gray ball of fur and attitude about the size of a Nerf ball. He sleeps all day so he can stay up carousing and bouncing around his cage at night. He has long hair and bathes regularly in dirt. In short, he’s like a tiny, uncommunicative teenage male; only without the typical video game obsession.
Our first introduction to the species came in the epic ninth-grade Spanish class project called Los Animales de Sudamérica. (Literally translated as The Animals We Have to Give A Report About.) Each student was assigned an animal to research and our son was given the chinchilla. The report covered the usual topics; description, habitat, guest appearances with Joan Embery on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and preferred food. Listening to his classmates’ reports my son learned that every carnivore larger than a baseball included chinchillas in its diet. In other words, in the wild a chinchilla isn’t a pet; it’s what’s for dinner.
I have used that fact as a threat with our chinchilla when annoys me at three a.m. by bouncing off the sides of his cage like a superball in a clothes dryer. He knows I’d never follow through. If being noisy earned the death penalty, I’d long ago have taken the cockatiel to South America and fed it to a wild animal.
Cockatiels are often confused with cockatoos by people who have never seen either. Cockatoos are large, white intelligent birds such as the one who co-stared as the smart half of the duo on the TV series Baretta. Cockatiels are much smaller, dimmer, and have a voice sharp enough to pierce granite. Our own personal cockatiel is particularly fond of vocalizing when I’m trying to make telephone calls. Any call placed from inside my home is likely to sound like an episode of Dropped Connection Theater.
I’ll dial and wait patiently for the other party to pick up, trying hard not to look directly at the bird and hoping he’ll be so occupied with the birdy in the mirror that he won’t notice I’m making a call.
“Pete’s Pizza home of the Pepperoni/Pineapple Pie. Can I take your order?”
“I’d like…”
Tweet! Tweet-tweet! Tweet-tweet-tweet!
“What?”
“I said, I’d like …”
Tweet-tweet. Tweet-tweet-tweet! Tweet! Tweet!
“That’ll be twenty-seven fifty. You’ll have it in thirty minutes or it’s free!”
“But…”
Click!
I’ve eaten an awful lot of pepperoni/pineapple pizza since we got the bird.
Meanwhile, my bird dines a special blend of seeds and pellets which is scientifically formulated to give his feathers a healthy glow and promote improved digestion. The chinchilla has a special diet tailored to his specific nutritional needs. And the cat eats food that (judging by the price) is made entirely of ground-up money liberally sprinkled with gold dust.
My pets have better lives than I do. I go off to work and they stay home all day where (I presume) they eat bon bons, watch Oprah and scheme about ways to annoy me. Their current favorite schemes involve waking me up early, keeping me up late, and spontaneously developing expensive medical conditions.
Somehow it doesn’t seem fair that I’m slaving while they’re playing. I’d quit my job and stay home with them, but then who would earn the money to support the animals?
