Postponing Pets

“Mom?” I could tell from Sophie’s tone that she had been mulling something over.

“Yeah, Soph?”

“We don’t have any pets,” she observed.

This is true. Max, my beloved cat, died shortly after she was born. At night, when I was pregnant, I would listen to his raspy breathing emanating from where he sat in the doorway to my bathroom. He had diabetes and an enlarged heart. I spent more money that I care to admit trying to extend his life, unable to say goodbye.

Only recently have I felt ready for another cat. Just the other day I was needling Kevin about getting a black one with green eyes. Such a cat would not resemble any of my former cats, and therefore I would be freed of the guilt of “replacing” Max. Kevin rolled his eyes, “An all black cat? So it can shed on everything?” As if the color of the cat had any bearing on how much it shed. Still, I knew what he meant. Max had a talent for being able to shed black hairs on white clothes and white hairs on black clothes. I’m fairly certain he could release them at will.

“Do you want a pet?” I fished, feeling somewhat ambivalent about her response. On the one hand, I miss the heart-slowing effects of having a warm ball of fur in my lap. On the other, cats—ALL pets—are work. Kevin has sensibly asserted that we should get a cat when Sophia is ready to take care of it. I am in perfect agreement with this. I received my first cat when I was five. I saw her at a garage sale just up the road. I begged and pleaded and made all kinds of promises I lacked the ability to keep at five. Against my father’s better judgment, my mother took me to get the cat. She was so tiny—all claws. The very first morning of her 16-year stay, she scaled my mother’s nightgown all the way up to her shoulder, mewing for her breakfast. I do believe my mother fed her (and cleaned her litter box) that day and every day henceforth.

“Yes!” Answered Sophie, pulling me back to the present.

“What kind of pet?”

“A kitty cat!” Thank god she didn’t say dog. Sophie recently overcame her fear of dogs. The Boyfriends (my friend Nan’s twin boys) have a lovely, sweet, obedient dog named Sally, whom Nancy describes as an 8th generation mutt. Sophia has been terrified of Sally from the day one. Nan believed that through gradual exposure, Sophia would master her fear. So, each time we went over, she brought Sally in the room. At first it was for a short period of time and Sally remained on leash. Nan barked commands at her and Sally sat, gave her paw, and played dead. Gradually, Sally stayed longer. And finally, Sally was off-leash. It was quite a triumph when Sophie asked Nancy if she could pet Sally. Nancy held Sally while Sophia stroked her fur. Emboldened by this, Sophia quickly graduated to attempting to cut Sally’s hair, grabbing her ears and smacking her on the head. I was appalled, but Nancy was cool. She’s feeling her power, Nan told me. We worked on gentle touching. There’s still more work to be done.

Still, I don’t want a dog. Ever.

Sophia has been around cats because her grandmother has two. Far less patient than Sally, my mother’s cats hightail it out of there when they see Sophia coming. They are both obnoxious: one by nature, one by nurture. Casey Cat loves Sophie’s grandpa and ONLY her grandpa. He regards the rest of us with scorn, sneering at me when I walk past. I can say this with authority, as a cat-lover, this cat is wholly unloveable. Thus, it was no surprise that he freaked out when Sophie’s grandpa rescued a 3 lb stray—Maggie Magoo. Maggie Magoo was a threat to Casey and Bernie’s inseparable bond, and so he did what any male cat does in this situation. He sprayed the joint. I am quite sure he has covered every inch of the rug in my mother’s finished basement. It smells like NYC on a hot summer’s day down there. Having won the pissing match, he reclaimed his man and left Maggie Magoo, skittish and untrusting, out in the cold.

This feline drama is off Sophia’s radar. Only recently as she walked through the basement did she note, “It stinks down here!” I think she has yet to connect it to the stinker.

I report this conversation to my friend and neighbor, who shudders at the thought of adding a pet to her brood, adding that her seven-year-old son is dying for a dog.

“How about a hermit crab?” I suggested.

“We got a couple of gold fish at the school fair this summer. Remember?”

“Oh yeah,” in my mind’s eye, I could see him holding up a clear plastic bag with a flash of gold inside, “whatever happened to those fish?” I couldn’t recall seeing them around the house.

“Oh they died within a couple of days. Thank god.”

Animal lovers, be assured this was not the heartless remark of a cruel woman. It’s the honest reaction of a mother whose household has reached maximum capacity. Where feeding the goldfish (and changing its water and whatever else you have to do to maintain goldfish health) is one more task that will fall to her, despite her capable brood.

Sophie is awaiting my reaction. “I want one too, honey. But we need to wait until you’re a big girl and can take care of it yourself.”

“Okay,” says Sophie cheerfully, popping her thumb in her mouth. Thank god, indeed.

If You're Scared of a Cow

Over a bowl of oatmeal one morning, Sophia composed a song (sung to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down):

Daddy will pick you up
Pick you up
Pick you up
Pick you up
Daddy will pick you up
If you’re scared of a cow.

She wasn’t just being silly, nor was this her typical morning tribute to Daddy…Sophia is terrified of cows. I’m not quite sure how it started. I think it has less to do with their heft and size than the fearsome sound of their lowing. My sister sent us a puzzle mat that had several buttons you could depress to hear the sound of an animal. Pushing the cow button immediately sent Sophia flying to the other end of the room. We tried some exposure therapy…Kevin or I holding her at a distance while the other pushed the button, but in the end we wound up putting the rug away until she outgrew her fear.

But so far she hasn’t. If we go somewhere new she’ll ask, apprehensively, if a cow will be there. And on the rare occasion that there is a cow—even an inanimate cow facsimile, such as the one you can pretend to milk at the local children’s museum—she will beg us to avoid it.

Sophia also has a fear of dogs. We are flanked, on either side, by neighbors with yippy dogs. Mostly harmless (one of them actually did bite the 14 year-old girl who mows our lawn) they’re brash, excitable, and bark their lungs out at Sophie (or a leaf caught in the wind, or their shadows, or my middle finger). So now every time we go out, Sophia makes a break from the house to the car, pleading, “The doggies won’t hurt you?”

This is something I can relate to. I am afraid of dogs. But unlike Sophia, who has never been attacked, the origin of my fear is quite clear (and justifiable) to me.

The first and most severe of attacks took place when I was in third grade. Jan, slow, overweight and outcast, sat behind me in homeroom. He invited the entire class to his birthday. Out of the 25 or so kids in that class, I was the only one who showed up. My mother dropped me off at a ramshackle ranch with a dirt yard and a gravel driveway. To the right, a large dog was chained to a stake in the ground and complained loudly upon my arrival. Jan was very pleased to see me. Together, we made a dent in the trayful of cupcakes his mother had baked, and I (a nerd in my own right) gave him a Little Professor calculator. With bruised pride, Jan told me that his dog was really dangerous, but he could pet him and did I want to see? (Even at eight, preserving his ego was more important to me than my own safety.) Sure, I did. I followed him outside and stood at what I figured was a safe distance. I must have miscalculated the length of the chain. The dog flew out from under Jan’s hand, which hung in the air, poised for petting.. He leapt on top of me, pinned me down and gnawed at the area above my right armpit. As in similar moments of crisis and great stress, everything slowed down. I was outside of myself, watching it happen: My own mouth opening to form a scream of terror. Jan’s mother, running out of the house to come pull the beast off of me. And what had Jan been doing? Screaming? Silently looking on? I don’t remember.

Ever since that day, I have not trusted dogs. I’ll cross the street to avoid them, ask my friends to put them away when I come to visit and scowl at those who let their mutts off leash in the park where I run. So it is hard for me to say whether my own tensing and hyperarousal has provoked fear in Sophia. Or if, independent of my own reaction, she has drawn her own conclusions about the trustworthiness of dogs. In an effort to ally her fears, I have become counter-phobic. I pet dogs. I say how cute they are. I point to their wagging tails and other indicators of friendliness. But, despite these efforts she retreats behind the safety of my thighs whenever there is a dog in our midst.

I have to wonder, if I was just honest about my fear, would she be as afraid? Is it my duplicity…or the fear itself that fuels her anxiety?

How does fear form? How do we come to understand that the world is a dangerous place—hazards at every turn. Car accidents. Poisons under the sink. Cows that moo. Dogs that bite. Is it a sudden confrontation with our mortality, our vulnerability? What provokes it? Early traumatic experience? Taking clues from parental anxieties?

Fear is anticipatory. It is of what might happen, not what is. Not even of what was.

It is a movement, then, from living in the moment, to a future orientation where bad things might happen? Perhaps the development of fear relates to an understanding of the linearity of time. Sophie often says “last week” for the past…whether something occurred months, weeks, or days ago. But I know she’s “getting it” that some things DID happen, that other things WILL happen. Those things that WILL happen are unknowns. She likes rehashing the past, or having me recount something that has happened, affirming her memory of the event, deriving comfort from the familiar.

But the future looms large and uncertain.

Which begs the question: Why does it have to be a dark future? Why can’t it be a happy future? Why doesn’t Sophia perceive a cow’s moo or a dog’s bark to be an expression of their essence, of their joy, as she does the roar of a lion or the hiss of a snake?

A friend recently postulated that perhaps death could be the best thing that happens to us.

Fear by its nature is irrational. Sometimes its “justified,” rooted in past experience and validated by neurotic parents and we can arrive at a satisfying explanation.

But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you’re just afraid of a cow. Whether it’s evil, good, or none of the above.