I want a pet. Granted, I'm not very good when things or people rely on me. Remember that time I had to save the world? What a disaster that was.
Still, I want a pet. I've caught the pet bug. It's a visual disease, which travels through the most cruel and subtle pathogens of all: cuteness.
Cuteness can reduce the hardiest man to a blubbering pile of goo with just a glance. Cute is never logical. Cute, like nerve gas, shuts off all the higher areas of the brain, leaving no functions but stammering and drooling. Cute exists in its own world with its own logic, which almost explains that show Teletubbies.
Pets are cute. Some kids are also cute when they're not being annoying or infectious, but if the world's cutest kid and the world's cutest kitty were to get in a free-for-all fight to the death to determine who was cutest, the kitty would win every time. Unless the baby had a knife because you know, thumbs.
In terms of cute pets, Puppies and kitties are the most popular. Dogs fall into two scientific categories: The mogambo-sized biggie doggies and the itty bitty yippie doggie.
The mogambo sort consume half their weight in kibble every day and drool a constant stream of viscous goo, their main by-product. Like an enormous rusty pick-up truck, they seem functional but really aren't. They would only be useful if, say, you really needed to get to work during The Blizzard of '06 and your great uncle Yvegeny left you a dogsled and a whip. We don't know why Yvegeny had a whip.
No one I saw was smart enough to take advantage of puppy power during The Blizzard of '06. I saw some dorks trying to snowboard down Park Ave but no dogsledders.
While the mogambo-dogs are perpetually good-natured, like cows or Canada, the yippie-dogs are always pissed off, like America. They make up for their small size by expanding their lungs to their entire volume and expelling out the air in a high pitched yippie-yap as annoying as it is ceaseless. Like many things of small stature, they need to fight extra hard to survive in a hard world of crowded dog parks and smelly old ladies and red velvet leashes which are slightly too short for them to be kicking the ass they most righteously desire to kick. They have no survival skills, and get by on sheer annoyance. A powerful tactic, utilized even today by the French.
Cats, on the other hand, only come in two categories: the cute and the dead. True, some dead cats are cute but in general only death can remove the self-righteousness that is so damned endearing in felines. Cats are cute with a vengeance. It's insidious. It'll catch you without you knowing, and then you'll suddenly wonder why you're eating froot loops in your underwear while Cuddles is feasting on protein-infused liver with salmon bits while luxuriating on a cushion and contemplating the finer points of Proust.
Still, having a cat is better than having another human being. A cat might still expect you to pay for dinner, but at least it will do something about those rats in the kitchen.
Of course I won't get a pet. I must be content with the damnable pigeons nesting outside my window. Oh, and my readers, all you adorable people. C'mon over here, little guys. Good readers. Here, have a biscuit.Instead of getting a pet I'm just going to walk through the park with my headphones trailing behind me while muttering "Come along, Fido". Because that's what I do anyway.
