Pets Are Stupid
By Kate, age 15, Pennsylvania
I do not understand the appeal of pets. In my experience, animals require a lot of time and effort. Once they have been trained properly and one has learned to tolerate their presence, they drop dead.My cynical view on animal ownership probably stems from my first pet, a psychotic cat my parents adopted to take care of their disgusting vermin problem in the early 1990s. He previously belonged to my parents' (possibly only) friends. They were forced to give up their beloved pet when he began urinating on their belongings and assaulting their other cat in response to the birth of their first child. Being extremely weird, my parents for some reason agreed to take in the psychotic animal. He proceeded to spend the next fourteen years attacking our house guests, fighting with neighborhood raccoons, and delivering dead rodents to our doorstep. Occasionally, I would arrive home from school to find a total of seven or eight deceased mice lining our walkway. This would not have been as frightening had the cat not been declawed.
My parents bought me a hamster when I was nine or ten. I found the animal adorable despite its tendency to defecate all over my room. Unfortunately, it managed to escape from its cage one afternoon and was slaughtered two days later by the previously mentioned psychotic cat. Poor Cheerio did not stand a chance against the murderous feline. My father comforted me by saying that at least my little rodent had tasted freedom before his untimely demise.
Soon afterwards, I was given a second hamster to replace the first. I named it Lucky Charm. Looking back, I realize that I was unhealthily obsessed with breakfast cereals. Anyway, the entire family began to refer to my hamster as Psycho within 12 hours of its purchase. Whenever I reached my hand in its cage, Lucky Charm would stand up on his hind legs and hiss menacingly at me, baring his teeth. I had to resort to using an oven mitt to clean Psycho's cage. Roughly a week after we bought the maniacal rodent, we returned the thing to Petsmart.
My most recent pet episode involved an adorable cat that I picked out and named Tony. He was adorable. Unfortunately, he had a tendency to pee on literally everything in our house. At age four, he still refused to use his litter box and had a tendency to attack our other cat. My parents murdered him brutally. (Actually, they put him down humanely at the veterinarian's office, but it's way more fun to say "murdered him brutally.")
Since every pet I have ever owned has either been murdered brutally or was clinically insane, I can safely say that I will not purchase one of my own. Ever. Except if it is a pit bull that responds to commands in Serbo-Croatian, as that would intimidate everyone around me and ensure that I never have to wait in lines again. However, I don't actually speak Serbo-Croatian and have no idea what it sounds like, so I think it is fairly unlikely that I will ever be able to purchase a dog like this.
