My marriage is built on compromise. For example, earlier this year, my wife and I discussed getting a pet. I wanted a dog, whereas my wife wanted a cat.
So we compromised and got a cat. (Incidentally, this is the same type of compromise that has us watching some made-for-television movie instead of a Blue Jays game, but I digress.) Back to the cat. Up until this point, I had never owned a cat, nor did I have any desire to. To this day, people ask what type of cat and he is and I honestly have no clue. "I don’t know what make or model my cat is," I will typically say when shopping for cat supplies. "He’s grey and his name is Owen, if that helps." It usually doesn’t. It took me a while to warm up to her, but I have to say he is both adorable and cheap, two qualities I look for in any type of companion. To this day, we have maybe spent a total of four dollars on toys for her - the rest haven’t cost us anything - yet he is completely content with her choice of playthings. A foil ball or pen cap, for example, can keep him occupied for hours. And I won’t even get started on how much she enjoys an empty toilet paper roll. You may notice that I have been alternating references to he and she to describe Owen. That is because, during our second trip to the veteranarian, he (the vet) informed us that he (Owen) was actually not a he (still the cat), but actually a she (Owen). I admit that when I first heard that, I froze. I even blocked out the plans by my wife to start getting Owen little cat dresses and into cat ballet lessons and such. And I’m not sure why it bothered me, but it was kind like having a child, and then finding out several months later that it’s not a child, but actually a horse. Nonetheless, me and her (him? it?) have only grown closer during these...er, unusual circumstances. I find myself more concerned now that she might get hurt when she does one of her 180 degree leaps from the floor to the table without climbing anything. Also, I find myself rewarding her with ‘treats’ now for things she does. Not scratching me, for example. But the icing on the cake had to be when I brought our little transvestite in for surgery. No, not THAT kind of surgery, get your heads out of the gutter! She was merely declawed, spayed and ‘microchipped’, all in the same sitting. On the drive over to the vet, I actually began telling her stories of when I went under the knife (I never have, so I made them up. But don’t tell her). When we arrived, I actually asked the vet is she’d be okay, to which he actually replied "We’ll do our best, and things don’t usually go wrong." WHAT? Can you imagine going in for, say, a kidney transplant and just as you’re about to go under, the doctor saying: "Don’t worry, Mr. Pasternak. This kind of surgery usually goes all right, I guess." Of course I worried the entire two days she was gone (Don’t tell my wife that), and everything went smoothly. She’s now on the road to recovery and within no time at all, will be jumping into the air at will, and biting me as opposed to scratching. Now that she’s recovering and I’ve had several months to get used to her, there’s certainly a bond growing between the two of us. I expect her to be saying her first word any day now. Just don’t tell anybody.