I haven't had a pet for many years now. The last pet I owned was a fish named Norton. When I say owned, I mean that I'm the guy who was responsible for cleaning his tank, for providing a place for him to live and for eventually killing him off. Until that time there'd been many the day that he would burble dispassionately at me from the murky waters of his ten-gallon bowl. We said goodbye to him with the traditional flushing funeral with full bagpipe ensemble, of course. To tell you the truth, I haven't had the heart to kill off another fish since then.

I'm pretty sure that fish aren't too happy with the icky ten-gallon bowl, non-working respirator and eventual porcelain goodbye. We'll never know how they feel about it, though, because they've been cursed with non-expressive faces. We take it out of the bowl, slap it around for a little while, laugh at it while it's gasping for water, stick it back in, what do we get? Puffy expressionless lips opening and closing while round eyes stare blankly at the bit of scum on the top that may or may not be food. In the middle of a feeding frenzy where you've just dropped major pieces of its favorite morsel liberally around the bowl, what do you get? Puffy expressionless lips opening and closing while round eyes stare blankly at the bit of scum on the top that is most definitely food. Inside they're probably screaming for joy, but we'll never know it because fish don't smile.

If fish are intelligent, they'd really better find a way to convey it to us, their fileting and breading nemeses. The average fish could stand to learn a few lessons from their tuna buddies.

Tunas have a real scam going. You see, they convince the dolphins to save a few human lives every once in a while, making us think that dolphins must be blindingly intelligent. So we give up tuna because a couple dolphins get caught in the tuna nets.

I think the albacore tunas really got the worst of that deal. "Dolphin safe"? Try, "non-albacore tuna safe."

I think it's time for a new pet, though.

We had a dog once upon a time. We got him when I was about five years old. His name was Bimbo. The story goes that I picked the name, but I can hardly be held accountable seeing as how I was only five. He died of a stroke several years ago. Before that, he was a mostly happy, fairly bouncy animal that insisted on greeting me on my way home from school like he hadn't seen me for ten years and I possessed the only remaining dog biscuit on the planet.

My main trouble with dogs is that they bark. That's about it, really. If dogs didn't bark, I'd probably like them a lot more.

The trouble is that we've bred dogs to bark and do little else. Where once we had fierce hunters, we now have yappy little poodles with stupid haircuts, owned by even yappier little people with stupider haircuts who actually care that their dog's ancestor didn't sleep with a great dane by mistake. They even have pieces of paper chronicling the fact that Buffy's great grandmother was unsullied by the mongrel masses.

Which brings to mind another point: why do we give our pets such stupid names? I've been tempted to give pets stupid names, believe me. If I owned a pet right now it would most likely be named D'Artagnan. Better a pet than a child, I suppose, but still, if you ask me, the Humane Society should have a division for hunting down people who've given their pets idiotic names. It'd be called the Dignity Division and they'd nail anyone who called a dog "Spot" to the wall. And how many cats do we have to have called "Mittens" or "Socks" before the species throws in the submissive-animal towel and starts shredding our faces in our sleep?

I want a cat. Not some placid little tabby, but a real jungle cat. I want a tiger. A big, furry, striped monstrosity of an animal with large, pointy teeth and an appetite. I'll call it Reginald, and it can tear through my neighborhood eating small children. Heck, it's a tiger, it can tear through my neighborhood eating small houses if it wants to.

But there are laws. There are always laws. So, I think I'll have to settle for a housecat.

Cats are a lot of fun to share a living space with.

Cats are arrogant. They strut around like you don't even exist until they want something from you. When they do, they rub up against your legs insistently as if suddenly you owe then something for the fact that they even deigned to touch you.

Cats are masters of cynicism. You could be in the middle of some cat game with them (drag-the-string-across-the-floor or dangle-the-cat-nip-mouse-from-the-cliff-edge) when suddenly, they stop and look at you with this attitude of "So what?" They instantly convey to you just how silly you are for indulging their momentary whims in such a puppet-like fashion.

Cats are at their best, though, when they're doing something stupid. They run screaming through a room, smack into a doorframe, recover and look at you with their wide little cat eyes. Every single gene in their body is coded to give you the message, "Hey, I meant to do that," at that precise moment. You've just got to admire that in an animal. That tenacity to always look cool no matter how stupid the act you've just committed.

So, I think a cat is the way to go. The only problem I can think of is how to fit it down the toilet when I eventually kill it off. That and I don't really know any good cat dirges.

Copyright © 1994 by Robert T. Bakie