PET ALLERGY
The first time our family committed to taking care of a pet was our dog Cookie. She was a small, old abandoned Shi-Tzu who was not potty-trained, sociable, or athletic. This was a bad fit for our family of two busy adults and two busy teenagers. I can’t remember where we found her, but it was on the street somewhere in our town. It was clear that she was unwanted, abandoned, and very scared, so we ended up taking her to our car. We put up ‘found’ posters on every block, and for two weeks we waited. During those two weeks, Cookie pissed on our carpets, pooped on the hardwood, and bit my arm, twice. I loved her unconditionally and though my parents sighed every time she had an accident, my older brother cleaned it up every time. Over half a year had passed and it was raining heavily all day. By the time the night fell, lighting and thunder rang through the air, and Cookie was clearly in distress. As an old dog, she was clearly having trouble dealing with the commotion outside and started to scratch our glass doors. She didn’t do any damage to them, so we left her when we went to sleep. My father came home late that day, and when he saw Cookie desperately scratching the door, he thought she needed to go to the restroom so my father let her out. My mother, brother, and I didn’t know she was gone until we woke up in the morning. She never came back. We put up ‘missing’ posters on every block, and for two weeks we waited. During those two weeks, my brother was hopeful. For the next few months, my brother held onto the hope that she was still out there somewhere, maybe even in a better household and happier than she was with us. Then, one day a neighbor a few streets down showed up on our doorstep with Cookie’s collar and said, “Her body was found in the river a few weeks ago. It took me a while to find out her owners, but I thought you would like this.”
After that, we had two guinea pigs my dad bought me for Christmas. The PetSmart workers said they would stop moving to the furthest side of the cage from us within two weeks of being inside with us, so I fed and took care of them diligently. They were both males, one was dark brown all over, and the other had splotches of brown, orange, and black on its fur that reminded me of cookie dough ice cream. During the two weeks, the two guinea pigs I named Ben & Jerry scurried away every time I fed and tried to pet them, but I told myself that they’d eventually come to like me. I desperately wanted an emotional connection with them but because they were scared of me, and I was scared of scaring them; I never really forced that connection. After a while, the guinea pigs became like every other responsibility. I fed them, gave them water, cleaned their cage, and said, “hi”. A couple of years pass and Ben is found by my mom lying very still in his cage with a piece of hay still in his mouth.
“You overfed them.”
At least that's what my mom told me. We held Ben’s funeral service in our front yard that night. I never knew what actually happened to Ben and why he died. Jerry went on to live a very long life for a guinea pig: a full five years before passing away, which may be the last time an animal in our household lives a fulfilling life.
This past year we’d been raising goldfish. One of the most inoffensive animals that needs an average amount of care, maybe even a small amount of care compared to a dog or guinea pig. I wanted no involvement with the fish. My mom mostly wanted my younger brother to have some sort of interaction with live animals because he’s young and finds joy in small creatures. I quickly learned that the combination of my busy and somewhat careless mother and an uncontrollable son is not a good combination to take care of fish. So I found myself feeding the fish whenever I passed by their tank that sat next to our laundry room. Algae built up pretty easily. I didn’t care much about the algae since it caused no harm to the fish, in fact, the algae on the glass serves the opposite, it provides a form of natural food to the fish and helps keep the water clean. Though the water looked green from the outside. My dad hated that. And so one day he took it upon himself to actually take care of the fish for once and decided to deep clean the tank and change the water because he thought it “looked ugly”. I walked by the tank one night and bent down to look at the fish and realized there were two floating goldfish on the surface of the tank. I quickly walked up to my father upstairs who was relaxing in a massage chair and said,
“Dad the fish are dead.”
“I know.”
I paused.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I’ve been telling your mom to clean the tank but she didn’t so I cleaned the tank. I told her to clean up the dead fish too.” He said. A few weeks later I realized that we originally had four goldfish. But I only saw two floating fish that night. But the tank is empty and stored away in the garage now. That could only mean that after my dad cleaned the tank, at first only two fish died, and he still kept the two surviving fish in the tank knowing that those fish would probably also die.
My mom came home with two black bunnies this past weekend. She said they were free from a friend at her workplace. When I saw them I just about banged my head against the nearest wall I could find and slammed my eyes shut in hopes that when I opened them the two black clumps of fur in the brown box would disappear. But they didn’t. My mom ended up using our Guineau Pigs’ old cage to house the two bunnies for the time being. We also had one old bag of leftover hay from them that we kept, which happened to be suitable for bunnies as well. The cage was decently sized for two young rabbits, so my mom decided that they would stay outside right in front of our foyer door. My brother came home shortly after college for summer break and immediately changed some things. He bought a larger pen, dug up our old compactable wire fences, and moved their cages inside to where we would walk by their cage every time we walked downstairs. I don’t want to say that the rabbits were neglected outside, but there isn’t a nicer way to put it. My younger brother really wanted to name the rabbits himself, so he confidently named the two black rabbits Benson and Benson. My older brother researched how to take care of rabbits and promptly made a trip to the local pet store to stock up on supplies. He came home with two bags of alfalfa hay and two bags of Timothy hay. He said, “They’re supposed to have a mixture of alfalfa and Timothy, and when they’re past six months old they transition to just Timothy. The issue is we don't know how old these rabbits are so I just bought both.” I didn’t question it.
It had been a month of my older brother arguing with my parents over whether or not we should keep the rabbits inside because they were pissing on our granite floors. “A quick wipe fixes that. We could also make a mat for them,” he would always say. I didn’t contribute much to the arguments, but I always agreed with my brother at a certain level. I mean, the rabbits were definitely more comfortable inside, we tended to them more often because we saw them frequently, and they were only somewhat smelly. My older brother always said that rabbits are supposed to be free-roaming animals because they learn how to use a litter box pretty frequently, but I thought that letting Benson and Benson free roam would send my mother into a coma.
I was on a trip out of town when my older brother called me very late at night in distress.
“One of the rabbits is breathing really hard. It seems like it’s hyperventilating or something and I’m really worried that it’s going to pass away tonight. I don’t know what to do.”
I asked him if there were any pet hospitals open.
“The only hospital open right now that can treat rabbits is an hour away. There is one pet hospital ten minutes away but I don’t think they deal with rabbits.”
I told him that it was his choice to make, something along the lines of, “if you feel like this rabbit needs its life saved then no one is stopping you.” I went to sleep after he hung up.
I returned home from my trip shortly after that and went to go find my brother to ask him what happened. He told me that he ended up driving an hour and the hospital told him that the rabbit had pneumonia, and prescribed some antibiotics on the spot. He now had to feed the rabbit its antibiotics every morning for ten days and keep the two rabbits separated. Except, he had to leave in three days to return to college so he asked me if I could take care of the rabbit’s antibiotics. I thought about how my mom was in disbelief that my brother cared so much for these rabbits and I agreed to my brother’s request. I think at the time it was out of spite of my mother for bringing rabbits home and then proceeding to neglect them, so I was going to prove to her that these two rabbits were deserving of proper treatment. Before my older brother left he also told me that he named the two rabbits because he felt like after all the effort he put into taking care of these two rabbits the least he could have the pleasure of was getting to name them. He ended up naming the male Mr. Morale, and the female The Big Steppers, after a Kendrick Lamar album. When I first heard the names I laughed a little because they just seemed to fit so well, and I didn’t know it was after a Kendrick album. Since The Big Steppers was battling pneumonia it seemed very fitting for her name to be so inspiring and grand, yet still endearing since she was just a young and nervous rabbit that was much smaller than her almost identical brother. The Big Steppers and Mr. Morale really struck a place in my heart. I found out that I was allergic to rabbits during the time period that I was giving antibiotics to Big Steppers. It was only a mild allergy, but since I had to take Big Steppers before going to school in my arms and hold a syringe up to her mouth while she sat in my lap, her fur would get all over my clothes. I would get really itchy eyes, a runny nose, and sneeze a lot, and at first, I thought it was just normal seasonal allergies, but after getting the same symptoms every morning I realized why. I didn’t care that much though since Big Steppers was very cute and after she recovered from her pneumonia I even went to the store to buy them a brush for their fur because they shed a lot. Brushing them definitely did not help my allergies though. School started and I started neglecting Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers after the first few weeks of school because I didn’t have room to think about much else than studying, homework, and college. I still fed them frequently and said hi. A month passed and my mom was getting really annoyed at the hay we’d track all around the house. Because of the rabbits staying inside, whenever we would feed them hay they’d kick it around in their cage and would inevitably kick some onto the floor outside. When my siblings and I would pass by their area the hay would stick to the bottom of our socks and we’d track it all over the house, into the kitchen, onto the stairs, into rooms, and in our carpets. My mom hated cleaning the mess we’d make so she made the executive decision to take them back outside but this time in our backyard in one of the plant areas. I was gone at school so when I came back home to see that they were moved outside I didn’t think much of it. I told my mom that because she went against my older brother's wishes of keeping the rabbits inside, she was going to be responsible for taking care of the rabbits from now on. She scoffed at me but didn’t refuse. It was soon after that I realized Mr. Morale was trying to mate with his sister, The Big Steppers, and I panicked. My mom said it was okay if they had babies because then we could keep one and give away the others, which completely blew my mind. Needless to say, I separated their two cages immediately that night and made sure Big Steppers was okay.
I don't remember how long after that it was when I got a call from my mother while I was doing homework in my room. She said, “Hey, one of the rabbits is dead.”
My older brother came home this past weekend and when we were at a family dinner he asked me, “Did you see our two new family members?” with an expression in his eyes that I could not decipher was disgust or disappointment. My younger brother shot up excitedly and started to talk. My mother looked up at me and I put my head in my hands, nose starting to water and eyes starting to itch.