I am not into pets but I respect the right of pet-owners to keep their dogs and cats in crammed flats, take them out for walks and rides, and I resist the urge to think: “People don’t have space to live; how do they put up their pets?” It is their life. It is their pets. What do I care…?
My brush with pets starts and ends with a Pomeranian dog called Don in an aunt’s place. It was fashionable then to own these white fluffy creatures, and Don had the look of sadness – almost philosophical, and pet owners would know what I mean.
He wasn’t aggressive except when forced into a bath, and he would return all blue – a very layman effort by my aunt’s daughter at “whitening” him using a last splash of indigo water. It was one hilarious sight – a wet Don standing right in the middle of the living room, shaking off the water and looking all blue. Somehow the blue gelled with his overall mood.
If you haven’t already noticed, Don has been referred to as “he” and not the customary “it.” That is what happens with pets. Somehow the distant “it” you attribute to all things non-human takes a personal twist. Dogs become distinct identities; cats get “family status…”
And that is something you accept only when you own a pet. The grandparents who never had one, thus, cannot be blamed when they called the high school girl’s dog, a dog. That was the beginning of the end.
“A dog, how dare you call him a dog?” she screamed. As with all grandparents who take the first signs of protest with amusement – the-little-one-you-saw-in-pampers-suddenly- talking-big syndrome – they laughed. “Isn’t it a dog?”
“Yes, he is. But you can’t call him a dog.”
Now that is the sort of flawed argument no grandparent is ever going to take. If a “rose is” multiplied by many “rose is,” is still a rose, a dog whatever you call “it,” is always a dog and every grandparent feels they have the right to call it a dog, an it, and nothing more. And that has little to do with generation gap.
Grandparents, as they are wont to be and ought to be, don’t let go. They have the strange habit of rubbing it in, which we as parents too acquire over time. What we regarded to be undiluted nagging as children come binding on you as a parent. “Don’t watch TV, read story books, why are you not studying, all you do is play, how come the clothes are scattered on the bed, is this where you keep your shoes, some great friends you have, let daddy come home….”
Grandparents, if you go by the logic of life as a perfect circle where the oldest and youngest behave in one and same way, would probably equal teenagers in tantrum-throwing. This is why you see as many grandparents in Internet chat rooms as youngsters posing as 21MDubai to the ASL queries when they are fifty years older, M still, and nowhere close to Dubai.
As pets go, there is no way you can rein in grandparents who call dogs by their common name. The best bet would be to gift them one.
