I Have Never Chosen My Own Pet

I have never chosen my own pet. It’s a weird thing to realize. Check out this list:

• Vito (grey-cheeked parakeet): Age 5, chosen by my dad. My favorite pet as a kid. I drew him constantly, wrote stories about him, thought about all the time. He died in my hands after living for like 16 years. I still think about him a lot.

  
  

• Sunny (yellow parakeet, no photo): Age 7, beautiful bright yellow bird. Escaped the house, flew up into a tree, and we never saw him again. I asked my dad if it was okay to cry. He assured me it was. I cried.

• Rambo (budgie): Age 9, brought home by my dad from Walmart as a surprise. One of the funniest fucking animals I have ever known. Also, turned out he was a girl. We discovered that when he laid an impromptu egg in "his" cage.

• Magic (bichon frise): Age 12, my parents told me they think I should have a dog, or some other weird reason, and they found this dog in the paper from a family that was moving but was super cagey about why they had to give up this wonderful dog. I cried the whole way home because I felt bad she was being separated from her family of 5 years. I think my parents just wanted a dog, but for whatever reason used me as the reason to get one. I didn’t much like dogs as a kid, and was sort of afraid of them. This little fluff princess warmed me up considerably.

  
  

• Frankie (canary, no photo): Age 14 or so, I dunno. He sure sang pretty then just up and died one day out of nowhere when we lived in Texas. My dad was really bummed.

• Jax (gray tabby): Age 22. My girlfriend got him a month before we started dating and that prick never let me forget it. We fought over real estate for the 19 years we were together. Smartest and most athletic pet I've ever had. He was like the LeBron of cats in terms of raw strength and knowledge of the game. Such a prick too. God I loved this cat.

• Roxie (another bichon frise): Age 24. I moved back home for only four months after grad school, so this doesn’t really count, but I did train this dog. It also bears mention that I talked my parents out of naming her “Cutie Pie.” I hope they appreciate the how I pushed them out of the way of the embarrassment bullet.

• Finn (gray tabby): Age 25. I truly attempted to help pick out this cat, but after a little white cat named Miss Chandler sneezed blood in my face at the pound, I tapped out and accepted whatever my girlfriend was going to get. She ended up with this sweet, guileless idiot who we injected with insulin twice a day for eight of his 15 years on this earth.

• Birdie (Bernese mountain dog): Age 40. My daughters wouldn’t shut up about getting a dog. We met someone with a Berner at a party in someone’s backyard and ended up adopting this one from a rescue in Kansas City. Kristin picked her, and then drove through Kansas to bring her and like 3 other dogs to Denver. I was so hungover the first two days she was in the house because I came back from a really debauched weekend in Palm Springs with some friends, and she freaked out and shit in her kennel when I left the first time, and then left shitty footprints through the house when she sprinted out of her kennel when I came home. That was a rough start. I didn’t fully warm up to this dog for like the first two years.

• Violet & Josie (two black kitties): Age 43. Again, Kristin found these from a friend who fosters kittens after Jax died. We came up with the names on the car ride back from Fort Collins. They’re named after 90s Alternative songs.

  
  

Would I have pets if left to my own devices? I like to think I would because I’ve had pets my entire life and I generally enjoy the experience, but I can’t say that for certain. I truly don’t know because that decision has literally always been made for me.

Like I said, it's a weird thing to think about.