Boring Pets?
July 3rd 2008 21:00
A black moor goldfish just like Spicer. Photo by KD Blackmore. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
One of my colleagues is planning on getting a turtle as a pet. His landlord doesn’t allow pets so he can’t have a cat or a dog and my colleague doesn’t want to have what he considers a ‘boring’ pet such as goldfish. “They don’t do anything,” he says. It’s funny he says this as he was echoing what another colleague said about cats.
My sister loves goldfish and she swears they are not boring. In fact, she says they have their own personalities.
My sister has had several fish. The bigger, the better. There was Big Red, Oleander and Stephen and Spicer (the last two were named after Sydney club DJs Stephen Ferris and Ian Spicer). Spicer was a black moor and he liked to boss Stephen the goldfish around. He would follow Stephen everywhere. Poor Stephen never got a moment’s peace!
My sister was very sad when those four died. Mind you, she is very anal about taking care of them so unlike the rest of the family - whose goldfish have died within days if not weeks of purchase – her goldfish have each lived a couple of years. Her latest pair, who have no names, have been her pets for two years.
So apparently cats and goldfish are boring in some people’s eyes. What about snakes, frogs, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits? I try to appreciate each living creature on its own merits, although I struggle when it comes to maggots and caterpillars. Although when I was little I was guilty of the same biased attitudes: I believed anything that didn’t create a mess (especially when it came to the toilet department) was boring and wasn’t a ‘real’ pet. So cats and dogs were in but goldfish and snakes were out. Birds lay somewhere in between.
What about you? Do you find certain creatures boring and don’t count as pets? Which ones are they?
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