Back in the Nervous Nineties, our home was host to more than just a couple of kitties. Thanks to the Mistress of Sarcasm (whose talent for sarcasm was still in its nascent state), we had the Spectrum o’ Mammal Sizes bracketed pretty well.
On the small mammal side, the Mistress had a succession of hamsters. The first, and sweetest of the bunch, was Leona Hamsley, pictured below.
The Mistress and Leona.
After Leona had passed on to the Great Hamster Wheel in the Sky, she was succeeded by Cinnamon, who had originally been the classroom mascot for She Who Must Be Obeyed. Cinnamon was also a pleasant enough little creature, whose exciting life prior to joining the Chez Elisson Menagerie was immortalized in the Jamaican-style Funeral Dirge I composed on her demise:
Reggae fi Cinnamon
I and I had a hyamstah cyall Cinnamon
Him a little ball a fur but him lots a fun
Him eat deh seed, stuff it in him cheek
An wi datter clean deh cage every five or six week.
One time Cinnamon him get out a deh cage
And all Briarwood dem a shout anna rage
Dey find him two week later, him a hyappy buggah
Ca’ him livin like a king in deh sack a sugah.
REFRAIN:
I and I feelin’ sad today
Cyaz wi little hyamstah him go away.
I and I feelin’ bad today
On him wheel deh little hyamstah cyan no longer play.
Well, me heard it said, an’ me heard it told
Aftah two year a hyamstah him get mighty old.
When Jah say it time fi him life to end
I and I seh goodbye to wi fuzzy friend.
I and I feelin’ sad today
Cyaz wi little hyamstah him go away.
I and I feelin’ bad today
On him wheel deh little hyamstah cyan no longer play.
I and I feelin’ sad today
Cyaz wi little hyamstah him go away.
I and I feelin’ bad today
On him wheel deh little hyamstah cyan no longer play.
When Cinnamon moved on to the Hamster World to Come, her successor was Mocha, the most evil-tempered little piece of shit we ever had the misfortune to have live with us. After Mocha, we had had it with hamsters.
Enter Kisses, the bunny.
Kisses, the
Kisses was a lovely pet, beloved of the Mistress. Bunnies are cute, and this one was no exception: good-natured and gentle. But there is a drawback to keeping a rabbit as a pet, rooted in Lapine Biology. A rabbit exists solely to convert water into prodigious quantities of Rabbit Piss.
And that piss be stanky and nasty. Cleaning the hutch required hours of scrubbing with wire brushes, followed by at least ten minutes of live steam. Not cleaning the hutch meant the Mistress’s room smelled of piss-saturated litter. Which it did anyway.
Nothing, however, compares, in sheer crap-generating capacity, to a horse. And we know this from first-hand experience.
Yes, we actually owned a horse – right up to a couple of years ago, when the Mistress became too enmeshed in college studies to keep him. His name was (and still is) Mi Anam, a magnificent Arabian that the Mistress her ownself trained from yearlinghood to compete in Hunter Pleasure classes. She showed her handsome gelding several times at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and we’ve got the pile of ribbons to prove it.
The Mistress canters Anam at the Houston Livestock Show, 1997.
I suppose if we had wanted an animal that could generate yet more shit than that horse, we could have purchased ourselves a hippopotamus. Perhaps an elephant. But our rule always was Never Keep a Pet That Can Crush You To Jelly In a Random Fit of Pique. (The horse was just about on the edge of acceptability under this rule.)
Today, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I are (just about) empty nesters, not just with respect to our children, but with Other Mammals. Alas, now, it is just SWMBO, me, and our two kitties, Hakuna and Matata. They are the perfect pets: friendly, relatively nondestructive (although the furniture and carpets might disagree), and, most importantly, they crap in a box. What more could you ask for?
But the Mistress is coming home tomorrow to partake of the Great Gobbling Bird, and we are ecstatic, pet nostalgia notwithstanding. May your Thansgiving be as sweet!
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