Can Pets and Kids mix?
My first pet was a lovely floppy eared rabbit called Pooney. I'd nagged my parents for months to get me a rabbit, so when Pooney finally arrived everyone in the house was pretty excited. So excited in fact that Pooney was placed in the middle of my bed while I jumped in a circle with my brothers and sisters chanting "We got a rabbit! We got a rabbit!" It's unclear whether Pooney was genetically predisposed to a weak heart, but the upshot was a lot of upset kids and a very limp rabbit. Not surprisingly, when Maisie asked for a pet I had to consider whether it was such a good idea.
Maisie's track record with pets hasn't been much better than mine. Before Maisie's arrival, Susie's mum's dog Paudie sat at the top of the cuteness hierarchy. Paudie is a handbag sized fur ball whose days begin with marmalade on toast and end on a pillow next to Susie's mum. Paudie, it is fair to say, is a pampered pooch. So it was always going to be interesting when this coiffured canine met our bruiser of a baby. Paudie easily had the better of the earlier rounds, being able to out manoeuvre his crawling opponent. But once Maisie got upright the tables were turned and Paudie had to face the fight or flight question. After Maisie almost tore his feather-duster of a tail from his groomed body, Paudie saw greater nobility in flight. Now whenever the tag-team pair of Maisie the Mauler and Cranky Frankie come to visit, Paudie makes a tactful retreat. So dogs are out, but what about cats?
Recently my hairdresser Eve started cutting hair from her home for a select group of clients. I must have impressed her with endlessly fascinating tales of fatherhood lifted from this blog, because I made it onto the 'home care' list. Figuring that a home is a safer environment than a salon, I gambled on bringing Frances along with me. The plan was to put Frances in front of the TV while my locks got a much deserved trim. This worked for about ten seconds before Frances' attention was drawn to Sooty, Eve's word weary grey moggy. In a battle of wills between Sooty and Frances, all the smart money would have gone on Frances. As it was, it wasn't long before Sooty resigned herself to the fact that there were worse things than having a toddler think you're a stuffed toy. As Eve and I chatted, Frances zig zagged up and down the hallway from room to room holding Sooty in her arms like a sack of scared spuds. I thought it would be best for all cats if they weren't introduced to Frances.
Which led me to the ultimate compromise pet - goldfish. In theory goldfish are the perfect pet because they don't need exercise, they don't create a mess in the house and they pose no danger to the kids. But as with cats and dogs, it's not what danger they pose to kids that's the problem, but what damage the kids can do to them. As well as pulling a fair swag of dead fish from the tank I've also had to retrieve a texta, a fork, an apple and, on about a hundred separate occasions, Frances's grasping hands. In fact, so many fish have ended their inglorious days inside our toilet bowl that Frances now says "goodbye fish" every time we lift the lid.
