"i am always for the animal...never for the person."

listen. i am coming to a conclusion that may sound mean-spirited, but the longer i work in a pet store, the more confident i am in my theory. i feel comfortable sharing this with you because i share the same boat as those that i am about to call out, but experiences like the one i had last night only drive my point home. that point? people that live with an animal inside their house will eventually go crazy. some have already crossed the divide into lunacy-ville. but make no mistake, people, if you have a pet inside your home, you (and i) are traveling down that road.

you don't have to invest too much time in The Word to happen across the creation story, days four and five. these happen to be the "days" that god creates "huge whales, flying birds, cattle, reptiles and wild animals - all kinds" including us humans. he also proclaimed that we, humans that is, either hold dominion over or are responsible for (depending on which translation you subscribe to) all the animals on the earth. as people go, you can probably place yourself, as it concerns your feelings towards animals, into one of these two camps. you are either in the "dominion over" camp and can rationalize everything from eating meat to hunting for sport or you can fall into the "responsible for" camp and can rationalize everything from eating meat (as long as the meat doesn't come from a slaughterhouse or mcdonald's) to never visiting a zoo because it seems "inhumane" for an animal to be held in captivity. as goes any either/or subject, the evolution of society has seen the "dominion over" camps and the "responsible for" camps develop their own specialized, extremist sects. the extremists in the "dominion over" camp go so far as to disembowel weak pit bulls like mel gibson in braveheart because the owner just bet his bmw that his rich, nfl-quarterback cousin bought him and came out on the losing end. the extremists in the "responsible for" camp can be defined in the lady that came in the store last night.

the lady seemed nice enough when she came in. she was wearing her sunglasses at night, which added cool points in my book and i didn't think of her as a troublemaker until several minutes later. several minutes later, i overheard her bitching to tiffany about the "health" of our cockatiel. and in some of her points, she was correct. the bird is sick. it is listless. it does seem lethargic. all of those things are true. but the lady started getting hostile in her accusations that we were going out of our way to harm the bird. she alleged that in her previous trip into the store she noticed that the bird had been fed hamster food (which could have happened on accident, but i don't believe did). she alleged that all the young people responsible for the birds and small animals well-being were idiots. and she told me that in cases such as these, she "was always for the animal, never for the person." and she lost me. i could go into detail about the rest of our conversation, but in those details i would lose my point. the short version is that i, in some way, convinced her that we were all doing the best that we could to educate ourselves in the way of cockatiel care and we would go out of our way to do the same with the rest of the animals. she seemed ok with my assertion and left. my point, though, is that she had already punched her ticket to crazy town.

and why? probably because she, like many others, have fallen victim to the notion that animals can become "part of the family" when the truth of the matter is that the notion of "family" as humans define it is lost on a pet. do my cats appreciate my giving them food and water? they seem to. but would they care any less if it was someone else giving them food? no, i think not. and this is even more of a truism when it comes to some of the other "pets" that we sell. hamsters? gerbils? birds? snakes? spiders? i have a hard time believing that past their instinctual needs of survival they place any great weight on their relationship with those that tend to those needs (dogs may, to some degree, be the exception in this argument. if a thief came into my house, my cats would either hide under the couch or purr and rub against the robber's leg. my dog, KAMmie would probably bravely and ignorantly get in the way because she likes me.). in fact, even with pets that have been in a loving home for years upon years, i am willing to bet, if such a thing could be proven, that most of their waking life is spent inside their cage/aquarium/house worrying about the next time the "hand of god" will reach into their prison and lay "crickets from heaven" at their feet. and because of this combined with being around persons that take pets a little too seriously on a daily basis, i tend to be disappointed in those persons more than i am a champion for them.

that said, i am an enabler. i now exploit these very primal and very human desires to feel like you are taking care of something for money. i encourage crazy cockatiel women that their own would be better off with bird "candy" and other things in the store with high profit margins. after all, that is my job, right?

i just feel like there is something almost inherently flawed in the idea of of keeping an animal in your house and developing a parent/child relationship with it. i think you can start to lose sight of the intended relationship between man and animal as god intended it. i think you can place too much weight on the plight of a cockatiel versus the importance of talking in a civil manner to a fellow human being. i think you can shelter yourself off from the world and forget that being "responsible for" an animal does not give you the right to call out people who have not gone quite as crazy as you just yet.

but who am i to judge? like i said, i am in this boat. i have cats and who knows what weight i would put into my relationship with them if something tragic happened and my real family was taken away from me. right now, though, i am thankful that i still maintain a perspective that allows me to differentiate between the role i play in hannah's life and that of my cats and dog. i am thankful that i am not in a place that i think it would ever be a good idea to put my dog in a t-shirt. i am thankful that i am certain KAMmie enjoys her sticks in the backyard just as much as a $30 tire rope. and i am thankful that i am nowhere near the crazy cockatiel lady last night that is always for the animal and never the person. god, help me never reach that place. and if i do reach that place, that crazy place, please give kiker or andy the peace of mind to shoot me and put me out of my misery.