The Pet Life Cycle

My least favorite part of having pets is the end of the pet life cycle…or the dying part. It’s probably their least favorite part too.

With most pets, the life cycle is long. Most cats live upwards of 15+ years. I can tell you that having had a pet from infancy to death, 15 years isn’t long enough.

Hamsters, unlike cats, live about 2 years. Hamsters have a little internal egg timer, once they hit the elusive 2 year mark they are usually toes up in the bottom in the cage. Now a hamster isn’t a cat, he won’t purr and is most of the time afraid of the people who feed him. He spends most of his time burrowing in his cage or running on his plastic wheel. But he’s still cute and furry and has a sweet face. Finding your hammy dead is indeed a buzz kill. Let’s face it. Dead hammys are no fun.

As was the case Monday night, say oh, 9pm, when my son was in the feeding and watering phase of hammy care for the night. Only the hammy no longer needed feeding and watering as he had followed the white light to the green hammy wheel in the sky.

We found his little body curled up in his straw hanging thingy in his cage…the hammy version of a straw tire swing. My son tried to get him out of said straw hanging thingy, but hammy must have crossed the rainbow bridge quite a number of hours earlier. His body was a little, uh, stiff. There was no budging his body from that swing. Poor ham.

So we wrapped the whole tire swing/hammy combo in an old dishtowel and proceeded to commence burial at 9:00 at night. I was quite the site dressed in my blue doggie flannel jammies, holding a flashlight in one hand and towel wrapped dead hamster in the other while my son dug a grave along the back end of our lot line near the green space.

I feel bad. I do genuinely feel bad. He wasn’t the type of pet that gave unconditional love, but he was unconditionally cute and if he had lived 15 years, I would have taken care of him. Hammys don’t need much in terms of care. On the pet scale – they are pretty low maintenance.

Rest in peace little ham. He really did have the cutest little hamster face.

Grill Master

I am an admitted carnivore. Steak, pork, chicken. Yum! My carnivorous self is also addicted to cooking shows that focus on meat and grilling. After I win the PowerBall, my dream job is to judge one of those awesome grilling competitions where delicious cuts of meat are lovingly smoked for hours on end in giant shiny smokers, by chefs that wear hats that look like pigs. Oh. My. God. Someone pass me a cigarette.

I am the only person I know that enjoys eating a steak while watching Adam Richman from Man Vs. Food also eating a steak, usually it’s some monstrous cut like a bone in ribeye grilled to medium rare perfection, which I will then covet even though I have a steak right in front of me. I know. It’s a bit sick and twisted.

The carnivorous part of my personality is not without its conflicts.

Conflict #1:

I have no interest in amateur butchery or any kind of butchery. Frankly, I don’t want to have a personal relationship with anything I am going eat. I am just fine with the notion that meat comes from the grocery store on those little styrofoam trays wrapped in plastic. That works for me. I have great respect for the animal whose main purpose was to eat well so I could in turn eat well. I don’t need to know more.

My brother in law and his family raised chickens one summer. We ended up with a roasting chicken from their summer chicken project. I couldn’t eat that chicken. It was like family. I can eat the chickens from
Jen-Ehr Farm in Sun Prairie (and they are incredibly tasty), but I’m not related to the fine people at Jen-Ehr. Therefore it doesn’t feel like I am part of the Donner party, eating one of my own.

I can eat the meat from a whole chicken but not meat from a whole hog. And I love pork. I do. But the whole pig is just too much like “Babe”. My in-laws have this weird fascination with “cooking a whole hog” – they do it a lot for big family gatherings for reasons I don’t understand. I can’t eat it. I just can’t. Now if they cooked a bone in boston butt low and slow with a dry rub and a yummy sauce, that would be a different story altogether. I’ll take a side of coleslaw.

None of this is remotely logical.

Conflict #2:

 I love animals. I do. I love them all. I had to stop volunteering at the Humane Society because I wanted to adopt all the animals as evidenced by the fact that we now own a Hamster.

I love the wild animals too (except coyotes). We’re having issues with the bunnies eating all of our plants. They are brazen little shits critters, hopping up to the bed of lilies like it’s the salad bar at Copps. My spousal unit has been live-trapping the bunny squatters and relocating them to the soccer field 2 miles away. I agreed to the live trapping project as long as no bunnies were harmed in the relocation process. No bb guns or accidental drownings in the pond. He can live trap and relocate as long as he talks to them during the car ride and takes them for chocolate ice cream first.

I am a bag of contradiction when it comes to my supper table. I know.

I don’t think I could give up meat. Life is too short with go without bacon. I could probably never eat chicken again and be okay with that – but ribs and steak and pork tenderloins. Mmmm…pass the sauce.