My Kind of Kids

I know it’s cliché to say that I think of my pets as children, but I do. Kind of. To clarify, I think of them as the sort of children you can lock up in a cage or just leave running loose in the house for hours on end while you go out and work or run errands or play the slots at the Ho-Chunk Casino or hang around a coffee shop pretending to write on a fancy-assed laptop computer sitting across the table from another pet owner whose cats or dogs or guinea pigs or other creatures are also in cages or running loose at their house, while they tap on their fancy-assed laptop computer that’s open just opposite yours making it look, for all the world, like you two are playing battleship. They’re the kind of kids that you actually encourage to eat whatever it is you dropped on the floor, let them drink from ponds, restrain them with nylon collars and leashes and shove off the bed when they start to puke in the middle of the night. You never put a dime away in a college fund for them.

Like the children I imagine I would have had if life had been very different, my pets come when I call (most of them, anyway), are jealous of one another, and make the house a mess. They want you to get their dinner, take them for a walk, get them a new toy, play with them, etc. making you just a worker on the line of a fulfillment factory where the conveyor belt keeps coming at you while you try to deal with one need after another, sometimes just giving up and allowing the pleas to tumble to the floor. That’s when it comes in handy that you can lock them up and leave the house without fearing repercussions from social services.

That’s where I’m at right now. Time for Sweet William to go into lockdown, for Taiko and Gracie to have a quick constitutional moment outside and for me to pack up my fancy-assed laptop.