My Pets Over The Ages And More

To begin my blog, let me first add one more category to my list of bewarists : Chinese Nationals. I got pick-pocketed, had an excruciating fall, weighed in my luggage with one, had another put her feet up on my table at home and yet another suggesting I throw in my life's savings investing in a backward and dangerously con-manly China. It is as if the winds of evil are a-blowing with the opening up of a hungry and capitalist China! Winds that smart your eyes and dry your tongue.

The doctoral-degree holder (or so he claimed, from renowned QingHua University and our distinguished permanent resident of almost a decade) Chinese National tenant of mine was half the time recruiting me for his Multi-Level Marketing scheme. Every month I have to fork out a couple of hundred from my own pocket just so meet my sales quota. He tried extorting money from me as "compensation" for what he deems to be his righteous right even though it was his own self-termination of the tenancy agreement.

What does this show you about the kind of behaviour and mental cognition they possess? Civilised? Ethical? Human? Or conniving, vicious, money-grabbing and thuggish?

I read a blog about the quandary someone was in over attending a movie alone and in relating the genre of movie he watched, let slip a Freudian. I didn't know an intelligent young man could be so hung up over as trivial an issue as a pick of a movie and the company, or lack of, he has for the show.

Frankly it shows the state of life we are all in. We have to conform and conform to every single social more society throws at us, for better or worse. We have to laugh at corny jokes our superiors crack, wear masks and do things we don't really want to . It is like someone who lamented how she feels alone even though she is surrounded by "friends". Well, good luck one and all. I am not going to be entrapped thus. I am going to live life my way, free from encumbrances.

Oh yes and I actually received a demolition order from the Housing Development Board courtesy of the renovation contractor ala the future lessee of my flat. My eyes almost popped out when the renovation permit had my personal particulars neatly laid out and had specific dates for the demolition. This coming even though I am still, technically, occupying the premises.

This brought on recollections of articles I read about of China and even more recently an European or American country where land and residential building were compulsorily acquired by the state and occupiers ordered to vacate. The cruel, cold sledge hammer and ball of capitalist pigs!

On to the main theme of my blog. The first pets we kept were caterpillars we found on vegetables (imagine that, vegetables of old has this which signals a healthier and pesticide-free feed for humans) which we kept in meshed shoe-boxes. When the little worms had metamorphosed, we could hear the angry flaps of wings, demanding to be released from their enclosure.

A stray black spotted female pigeon had the great fortune to wander into our house. We had it caged ( an old food trolley cart we converted) and lo and behold another white male pigeon followed suit. A couple it became, though the male was always pecking at the female. They copulated and the female laid two eggs. One was born still-live while another actually hatched to live for a while before submitting to the cruel fate of captivity. We would watch with fascination as they curdle food to feed their young.

Yellow and fluffy chicks make good and cute pets while young but as soon as they grow up, they are big, change colour and make a lot of noise, eventually ending up as dinner on a platter. I can remember our favourite chick/hen called Fluffy (or was it Whitey) who had its throat slit and died in the throes of an excruciating death on the floor of the bathroom, spilling blood all over. YUCKS! I must have been traumatised and refused to eat it.

Parents , please do not have pets as food. Please separate the two. Pets are pets and food is food.

Breeding hamsters can be just as traumatic. I had a white and brown couple. They reproduced so fast, it was litter after litter of baby mice. Once they were of age, I had them sold. The inter-breeding went well and the babies were nicely colored of different hues.

The unfortunate turn came when the mother hamster became cannibalistic, eating up its babies, leaving turfs of tell-tale fur and killed its soul mate, leaving a ghastly-looking gash on its side, gory and its insides showing.

Remember that any living thing you keep is a life. You have to attend to it as much as you would a human baby. When it is sick, you need the veterinarian. Just remember that.