Horrorscopes: Twelve Tales of the Macabre

I've Always Kept Pets

I’ve always kept pets. They say that a child who grows up with a household pet is that much more likely to keep pets as an adult. I suppose that makes me a case in point; my parents kept roughly half a dozen pets in the house at any given time. I, in turn, have more than a dozen. In the days when I still entertained regular company, I was quite often likened to the cat-ladies you hear about on the news; unstable hoarders who obsessively collect cats until they have so many that no one could possibly remember all their names and the property itself becomes a run-down hovel riddled with disease and pervasive odor. This comparison is cheap, however; I’m much more akin to a numismatist eagerly seeking out rare coins, cross-checking mint dates and defects, painstakingly searching for the right addition to a growing collection. Both habits may be compulsive, sure, but the latter is much more deliberate and much less unsettling.

Besides, I only have four cats. I also have three dogs, four parrots, a raccoon, a ferret, an iguana, and an owl. Had I acquired each of these at the same time, I suppose there would be something crazy about it. But each one came at its own time, by different devices and with varying intentions placed upon it. Just like any addition to any family, they came by fate’s volition more often than mine.

I sought out one of the cats—Minxy--when I first got over the death of her predecessor, Jameson. I had told myself that I wouldn’t get another cat—that no one and nothing could replace Jameson, but in the end my grieving will had caved. A similar event led to my acquisition of Taffy, my three-year-old husky. And for my schnauzer, Harrison. The parrots I had sniffed out, sifting through breeder after breeder, looking for the exact birds I wanted; a pair of hyacinth macaws at that time. Then a cockatoo, and then an Amazon.

The others just came in on their own. A few strays, a few free-to-good-home’s, and one—the owl—had been thrust in my lap by a local shelter who had found her with a broken wing and knew I had the proper wildlife permits to adopt her.

There was nothing obsessive or insane or tragic about any of it. My motley family just grew the same as families have grown for thousands of years. And my house is hardly a zoo; the pets maintain free roam of it, of course, but I keep it clean and they do their part by not piddling on the rug or leaving their toys lying about. It’s a cozy home.

It was a cozy home.

We spend most of our time in the family room. The cats tend to laze around the fireplace and the dogs take up positions all around me on the couch where I sit with my laptop, contently working from home as I have for most of my adult life. The parrots and the owl watch me from their respective bird-gyms occupying that half of the room. The ferret and the raccoon are much more lively and tend to wander about, with no knowing where they are at any given time.

There was so much to be found endearing in my family’s mannerisms. Before. The way that Harrison would start yapping every time a car went down the road, as if I had asked it for a scout report. Taffy and Hulk, my great dane, would go berserk shortly thereafter, causing the cats to scatter in all directions. More often than not a parrot or two would spook and take wing and I’d have to gather them up from the floor and put them back on their stands. Sierra, my raccoon, would poke her head into the room reproachfully, having been roused unwillingly from a nap. This sort of behavior taking place every hour or so might seem tiresome to most, but it was always a comfort to me. I don’t receive visitors often, these days, but I always have an early alert system if anyone ever pulls into the long driveway. In fact, it often appeared that Harrison’s yapping was that of a sergeant calling his soldiers into defensive positions.

It was sweet, I had thought, that my pets were protecting their master from unannounced callers.

It was also sweet the way they would sit and admire me. It seemed that no matter what room I was in, I had at least two pairs of eyes on me, with those adoring expressions on their faces. When I sprang up from the couch to start dinner, Taffy and Sierra would follow along obsequiously. When I was in the bathtub, Hulk would sit by my side and lick my shoulder.