What is a Pet? #MFRWauthor

The official topic was "meet my pet." The first problem with writing this post is the definition of "pet."

The fish won at the county fair and brought home in a plastic bag was to many children of my acquaintance their first introduction to a pet and to the responsibility of feeding and caring for them. Later, there was the puppy that was officially a farm dog, but you know who you got the task of feeding and combing burrs out of his long hair. The beautiful sable collie became what I consider the first pet from my childhood. 

A few years later, a tri-color collie took his place. Salt and Pepper came from championship stock. Both his sires held multiple best-in-show awards. Neither dog was an indoor animal, both had their own coop complete with a shingled roof, straw bale insulation, and all the dirt they could dig.


On the farm there are pets... and there are pets. One might say a domesticated animal that responds to its name and is cared for is a "pet." Betty's Pride and Joy, a Nubian goat, would meet that criteria of a pet. At least until she ate my mother's rose bushes to the ground, thorns and all. 

To me, responding to their name doesn't qualify a creature as meeting the definition of a pet. Bronco, a beefalo steer, was definitely not a pet. A true pet would not cause the trouble he did by breaking out of the pasture on my high school graduation night. In an unusual display of cantankerousness, he refused to respond to the food call and I had to chase him around the orchard--in my cap and gown and high-heeled shoes.



I'll end this post with what is now considered a "pet" by today's standards. And they aren't called a pet, but a companion animal. Some people call them "grand-puppies" or "fur babies." If you're following the challenge, you've met this particular animal before. Just don't call him an animal, he gets upset. He's aristo-cat-ic, sophisticated, and always in a tuxedo. To paraphrase another tuxeco-clad male, the last pet introduces himself as "Cat, Tigh Cat."



~till next time, Helen. And be sure to visit some of the other pets in the challenge.