I think I've made it quite clear that I am obsessed with getting my own pets one day. And I say one day because my mom is too afraid to have any pets in our house right now...or ever. I've always lived vicariously through my neighbors and got to even help one of my neighbors adopt her second puppy. I shouldn't be too ungrateful though because I have had a couple of pets that my mom was able to accept having in the house: parakeets and multiple fish.

The problem with those pets is that I was probably too young to understand the level of care that they needed. For example, parakeets are extremely social birds and need active environments and constant interaction to thrive. My parakeets Ricky and Lucky lived great lives and I think that a huge part of that was that they had each other the endure the 9-year-old that constantly terrorized them (not intentionally). Every time I tried to "train" them or hand-rear them, I would wear these purple gloves that were super thick and honestly probably very scary for small parakeets to see invading the cage. I wore them because I was always scared of being bitten...which I did get bit quite a lot. I also had a nighttime routine where I sang a lullaby to them and then covered the cage with a blue blanket. I thought I had pet-owning skills down really well. But I did refuse to get up early in order to feed them before school.

My parents also uh, did an irresponsible thing by placing them in their cage outside on our apartment deck to get fresh air. In other words, they placed two non-hand-reared parakeets in their cage (that has SLIDING doors) outside and then they LEFT to go run errands. I came home to an empty apartment and a parakeet missing. Lucy had figured out how to slide the door open and was perched on a nearby tree, chirping encouragements of escape to Ricky. My dad and I were able to catch her with a towel. But apparently, my parents didn't learn their lesson the first time and left the birds out on the deck again. Lucy was gone for good at that time. After Lucy left, I gave up on the parakeets and gave them to my third-grade teacher to raise with her other classroom pets. But then she forgot to leave the heat on over winter break and uh...Ricky died. :(

On to my fish raising fiascos... I have own goldfish, bettas, and molly fish. For the goldfish, I kept three in a bowl and was too young to realize that was unintentional abuse. They ate a lot...and pooped a lot. So they died pretty quickly. But I did do a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to us going to Earthfare to buy premium filtered water for their bowl and lugging the water jug up and down our apartment stairs. For the betta, I also kept him in a bowl, but bettas are extremely sensitive fish and need an extensive tank set up with a water heater and filter and just a lot more than I could give him. For the mollies, the sales rep at PetSmart made me buy them by advertising how to come up to the top of the tank to kiss your fingers. She recommended we buy 10 mollies and keep them in a 20-gallon tank...but mollies can be aggressive and are also super sensitive to water quality. So adios 10 mollies...I may have intentionally sent one out to the ocean via the toilet, but we'll just keep that story for later.

In my honest opinion, my most significant pet ownership experience was with "my" cat. You might be wondering why "my" is in quotation marks in the headline. When we finally bought a house here, I found that there was a stray cat that wailed at our front door every night, especially during the winter. I set up a box with a blanket for her and fed her milk, which is when I realized that cats don't actually drink milk like Tom & Jerry made me believe.

I decided to name her Fresca, mostly just because I drank a lot of Fresca courtesy of my best friend's garage fridge during middle school.

Whenever I got off the bus after school, she'd be roaming around our garden and I'd spend an hour outside just doing homework by her side. I also tried to train her to like being picked up...and I may have one time given her a traumatic bath experience, but we won't talk about that.

I also started to buy cat food and cat treats every week at the dollar store next to the rented kitchen we used for the Athens Farmers Market Food trip. When we went to the kitchen on Friday nights, I'd mooch $10 off my dad and spend around $6 on cat food and the rest on snacks for myself. I probably ended up spending around $100 on that cat before I learned her true identity.

I was playing with her in our driveway one day (see cover picture) when the elderly couple that lived two doors down drove by in their white minivan and slowed down. The husband called out "I see you've met Boots! Isn't she the sweetest?". You could say my world fell apart. Here I was getting conned by a cat who had a family and access to food 24/7. Here I was just fattening her up, giving her endless treats, and playing with her. And she just had to be a faker. I still obviously cared for her after that, but I stopped buying treats because I was bound to give her feline diabetes if I kept at it. Over the years, she stopped coming to our house, but I'd still spot her nearby; when I called out to her though, she'd barely hear and react, so I think that her hearing had gotten worse. I'm sure she's passed away by now because it's probably been 4 years since I've seen her. But I probably will always consider her to be my first cat, even though she was probably just using me for attention and food. It's fine. I love her.