Pet Slave

I was never a pet person, but when my wife and her children moved in with me they brought their dog; an old cocker mix.

My wife also just finished reading the James Harriot collection, and she was looking for creatures to save. I recall we were driving to Manzanita one evening and she said, “Turn around, there’s an injured kitten on the road.” I turned the car around to discover that it was actually a crow that had been struck down and its wing was moved by the wind every time a car drove by it.

The next day we were driving down our country road and out in the middle of no where a kitten darted across the road in front of us. When we returned that evening, that same kitten darted across the road in the same spot. The following day my wife went for a walk down to the spot and rescued the kitten.

People mistake the country as a good place to dump unwanted animals. Please people, be responsible, don’t dump your animals on us.

Anyway we now had a cat and a dog. I didn’t want to be a pet slave, one who constantly lets pets in and out, so I got a pet door that fitted into the sliding door we used to have. It worked out well. So much so that when I replaced the slider with a real door, I designed a pet door in the wall of the new addition. The cat and dog could come and go as they pleased.

One day I started noticing that the water bowl for the pets was getting really dirty. I’d freshen it every day, but every morning it was dirty. Then one evening the pets were with me while I was reading in the living room and I heard the pet door swing a couple times, so I snuck up to the laundry room and turned on the light and I saw three raccoon asses all going out the pet door at once. That was the end of that good idea. I again joined the ranks of the pet slave. The pet door has been closed ever since.