Pets are NOT things to be dumped when you have had enough of them

Having followed the blog posts by Au and Target entitled Katz and Other Tales at http://blog.lepak.com/, for quite awhile now, I think time is ripe for me to contribute my two cents worth on this topic. Taking in pets can do wonders to a person's life. However, there are many factors to consider if/when one plans to take in pets as a companion in life.

Some of these factors include time and money to be invested into taking in a pet, also space to be provided for the pet, especially when the pet is a dog or cat. Not to mention, the duration of commitment you can give to the pet and your health condition too. People who are allergic to animal fur should consider pets that either do not have fur or shed considerably less fur throughout its lifetime.

The most common type of pets that can be found in Malaysian homes are usually a cat or a dog. Some Malaysians also loved to keep fishes, common species of turtles or tortoises, hamsters, rabbits, birds or chicken. As for me, I am keeping a female and a male Siamese fighting fish, i.e. betta splendens as pets. This is actually a compromise with my parents as I am living with them, and they absolutely cannot stand the sight of cats and dogs in the garden.

Ideally, I would love to keep a dog as a pet but after seeing how irresponsible some of the neighbours are in keeping dogs as pets, I have resigned to the fact I don't want be a nuisance to other people. Also, I don't like the idea of dumping the poor animal once I'm unable to keep it as a pet. Thus, this reality check found me keeping two fighting fishes instead.

 The female betta splendens 

The male betta splendens






The neighbourhood I have lived in for almost 30 years is a nice and peaceful place to live. However, some inconsiderate neighbours dumping their cats and dogs once they were unable to keep them destroyed the niceness and peacefulness of the neighbourhood. Stray cats and dogs roamed the streets and deposit unwanted  pressies at the residents' gates and compounds.

Yup, now I even have two different stray cats that have taken a liking to my car. One cat is black and has white socks who likes to lounge on the roof of the car and another a charcoal grey striped one loves to lounge under the car. These two cats often leave clumps of fur on my car, at the very least not some sort of unwanted pressies. I used to shoo them away initially, only to find them stubborn as a mule and they keep reappearing. I have resigned to the fact that I should make peace with them and let them do as they please as long as they don't dirty and scratch my car; as well as they don't make any attempts to enter my house scaring the living daylights out of Mom.

However, the presence of stray cats, coupled with stray and owned dogs meant that I have to put with the constant orchestra of meowing and barking almost every minute of the day, and it gets worse during the night and early hours in the morning, before the break of dawn. It's no fun trying to catch the ever elusive sleep in this ridiculously continuous din.

No thanks to some incosiderate neighbours these poor animals cause unnecessary incovenience to people like my family who doesn't keep a cat or dog as a pet. And I noticed that my fishes are sometimes stressed out by the noise made by these kitties and doggies. They should NOT have kept these animals as pets if they were NOT able to commit themselves to do so. Keeping a pet requires discipline and commitment if one is to derive the benefits of doing so.

Unless one is willing to be disciplined and able to invest the required commitment in keeping a pet, let's not create unnecessary suffering to these innocent animals.