Bad Parent: Take My Pets, Please
I used to love my dog and cats. Then I had a baby.
by Melissa Anderson Sweazy
August 21, 2008
The dog, our former "baby," was simply an inconvenient mass of baby-slicing claws and potential allergens. The cats left hairballs like a breadcrumb trail for the baby to follow. When not literally underfoot, they lay about on the baby's things. They yowled outside every closed door. The hair. The everpresent hair that no amount of vacuuming could banish. When we had a precious, spare moment to ourselves, elderly Andy would defecate on the carpet or someone would eat said feces and lick the baby.
And the kicker? They loved the baby. We couldn't use pet jealousy or aggression toward her to justify our feelings, and that just made us hate them even more.
But for the sake of the family, we tried to make it work. My husband the hero (already laboring under massive sleep deprivation while we co-slept) rose extra early to take the dog on the long walks to which he was accustomed. We stepped up doggie "day care" to twice a week to help him burn off all that pent-up energy. The cats were nuzzled and lavished with treats when not trying to trip me on the way down the stairs with the baby.
"Why don't you just get rid of them?" a friend asked after listening to my rant. She matter-of-factly announced that she'd given away her cats shortly after having her baby. She placed an ad in Craigslist, interviewed a few candidates, and poof! No more cat hair to fish out of the baby's mouth. I left in a funk of confusion and jealousy. That was actually an option?
Getting rid of them was what those other people did. Before we found Murphy, I spent hours volunteering at animal rescue groups and trolling online shelter sites in my search for The One, shaking my head at those lazy, callous people who had dumped their pets because they no longer had time. They had made a commitment to these animals, and surely a little sleep deprivation and maddening annoyance couldn't justify breaking such a promise, right?
"Why don't you just get rid of them?" a friend asked after listening to my rant. That was actually an option?
Still, the hatred gnawed a hole in me. I was heartened to hear from my friend Lisa, who confessed to lying awake at night, imagining braining her incessantly barking dogs. She admitted that she was horrified by the disturbing, violent images, insisting that she used to not be "that kind of person." And then she realized, she wasn't that person. She was just someone trying to get sleep.
Sleep deprivation was definitely taking its toll: on me, my husband, our family. If the family unit wasn't functioning, it was our obligation to fix it. But did this mean cutting out a portion to restore some sanity? Signs pointed to yes.
Then there was the Colorado incident.
We left town for Christmas vacation, leaving the pets in the care of our beloved sitter. I called on New Year's Eve, letting her know we would be extending our trip an extra day. She called back, frantic. She didn't have our trip on the books. In a perfect storm of misunderstanding and double bookings, she hadn't been to the house. For an entire week.
We waited in tense, agonizing silence for her to report back as she raced to the house. Dread knotted up my stomach. Please, please be okay, I prayed. Amazingly, they were. They drank out of the toilet and noshed on the giant bag of cat food one of them managed to tip over. They even had the courtesy to pick one carpet to use as their restroom. Not another piece of furniture was touched. They happily received the petsitter when she arrived to check on them, accepting walks and love and belly rubs, and then resumed lounging around the house like nothing had happened.
I hung up with the sitter, and my husband and I sat down on the floor and sobbed. When we got home, we raced each other inside the house, scooping up our pets and whispering our gratitude into their fur. We had hated them, but as it turned out, not enough.
I now understand and respect the decision any parent makes to relocate their pets. No amount of bellowing from animal advocacy groups can convince me that an animal should take precedence over a child — or a parent's ability to take care of that child. But we will be keeping ours — the feces eater, the ambusher and the bully. It turns out the baby loves them, and sometimes we do too.
Article photo: Bruce Lee
©2008 Melissa Anderson Sweazy and Nerve Media
About the Author
|
|
Related Articles
|
|
Melissa Anderson Sweazy is a freelance writer and photographer living in Memphis. She swears no animals were harmed in the writing of this essay. Life in pictures is updated at bebedreamblog.blogspot.com |
|
|
-
by Marjorie Ingall
Believe it or not, formula isn't poison.
-
by Madeline Holler
I love you, but I hate your kid.
-
by Katie Allison Granju
A leading attachment parenting writer says, enough already.
|
