On Pets

Jochem and I love animals. My animal love has an obsessive side to it in that I support several animal organizations (and have convinced Jochem to do the same) and can't bear to see animal cruelty, not even in movies; however, I do not even come close to being a vegetarian. I blame my Spanish culinary upbringing and my meat-driven boyfriend for this, but the truth is, I have no willpower. I see things in black and white. Were I to stop eating meat for the animals, I feel that I would also have to stop eating fish in order for it to make sense. And this is what always stops me. I can imagine giving up steak and luncheon meat and I can even imagine living without tuna on my pizza, but as soon as I remember Kyushu, the Japanese restaurant where Jochem and I go to once a month and spent fifty euros on the best sushi I have ever had and where the wait staff recognize us and don't even give us menus anymore because they know we always order the same things, I always give up.

But I have always been an animal friend and as a child my little brother Jordi and I were able (or should I say: allowed) to take care of almost every pet known to man: goldfish, birds, hamsters, rats, rabbits and lots and lots of cats. For some reason, guinea pigs never made the cut, nor did my one true wish: a dog. A puppy Golden Retriever to be exact. This obviously scarred me for life, because I still want a dog. So does Jochem. Exept the Golden Retriever has made way for a new breed: a pug. Pugs are the absolute cutest puppies and Jochem and I desperately want one. Not just because we think they're cute, but because we truly believe a pug would be a perfect dog for us and for our life style.

Never a couple to "go over ice in one night" (yay for Dutch expressions), we did a lot of research. We walk together a LOT. Once a week we walk around the city center of Utrecht and several times a week we walk through the Griftpark near our house. We are always jealous of those people who are accompanied by a dog, so one time we looked up a book. We were looking for a dog that we could take out walking, but not a dog that would need hours a day of running (think: huskies or German shepherds). We also didn't want to worry too much about grooming since we both hate cleaning and because I am such a neat-freak when it comes to my house. It turned out that so-called companion dogs would be our best bet since these are usually small, therefore don't require a lot of excercise or food, and are very attached to their owners. They can even be potty-trained! They are basically cats (the book said this, not me), since they don't require a lot of care, like cats, but are not as strong-willed as cats. This sounded perfect for us, but with us being poor students who travel a lot and have no idea where we'll be in the next few years, we don't feel it would be right to get Cracker just yet. Yes, we already have a name for our future pug. So as when we walk in the park and are jealous of all the other dog owners, we say "I wish Cracker were here". I'm not kidding you.

So, with our pug plans put on hold (GREAT alliteration!), we figured getting a cat first would make more sense. A cat is a stubborn kind of creature but from experience I know that they can be very sweet, they can stay indoors, they clean up their own mess and you can even let them stay by themselves for a weekend. But getting a kitten requires a lot of money and attention as well, something we just don't feel ready for yet. My aunt might give us a kitten next year when her two cats have gotten together, but until then there will be no Parma. That's the name we've given our future cat. I'm still not kidding you.

And after we decided we weren't ready for the dog yet and wanted to practice for the dog with the cat but decided we weren't ready for the cat yet either, we decided to practice for the cat with two goldfish. And that's how Pasta and Pesto came into our world. Yesterday Jochem and I went downtown to an animal store and bought the whole nine yards: a fish bowl, green pebbles, some water plants, fish food, a fish net, two devices that allows us to leave for either a weekend or a week without starving our animals, and, of course, two goldfish. We are determined to name all of our pets after food (see the sections on Cracker and Parma), and so we've named the golden fish Pasta and the black fish Pesto. We think it's a perfect match! :) I've also tried to convince Jochem to name them James and Joyce or Ernest and Hemingway, but he hasn't fallen for it yet. We placed the fish bowl in our study/extra bedroom where we spend most of our time, on the table next to the sofa bed. It''s silly but we really like our new pets and talk to them all the time and check about every five minutes to see if they're still alive and generally feel very good about this new 'responsibility' of ours (I mean, it's not like we can go to Italy again for four weeks without coming home to a nasty situation). I even wrote "Welcome Pasta and Pesto!!!" on our fridge!

Now, let's just hope that the future dog won't drive the future cat crazy so that it won't eat our present fish.