Occasionally couples toy with the notion of getting a pet before having a child as a sort of a dry run. A way of testing out how a baby might fit into their lives.
Personally I think this is a bad road to go down if you are not a bona fide animal lover in the first place. The plan is inherently flawed for two reasons. One: Having a pet is not really proportionate to having a baby. Either you get a low maintenance pet like a goldfish or a cat which is obviously no preparation at all for a baby human. OR you get a dog which to my mind is WAAAYYY too much responsibility, (and I have a baby human).
The second reason even more pertinent: What happens to the pet once the baby human arrives? All my friends who’d gone the tester-pet route maintained that the pet would be a huge part of the forthcoming baby’s life. Listening to them it kind of sounded like the pet would in some way be contributing to the raising of the baby.
Research would be cited on how pets aid the development of empathy in growing human babies and such the like.
Then invariably – GROSS GENERALISATION ALERT – the new baby arrives with the attendant chaos and the dog/cat/goldfish becomes at best a slight inconvenience or at worst a virtual pariah, a second class citizen in their formerly loving home.
The disgruntled pet may appear to retreat and defer to the noisy, demanding new arrival but all the while they are thinking:
“Wait, just you wait. Sooner or later they’ll realise that I’m cuter than you, quieter than you and I’m house-trained.”
Another few weeks pass and the household equilibrium (in the dog’s eyes at least) has NOT been restored. The scene is set for a Tarantino-style vendetta…
8 ousted pets exact revenge on the kids who replaced them
1. The power struggle…
2. Who wore it better? Cat just effortlessly out-cuted baby.
3. This monkey lured his nemesis into a false sense of security by pretending to drop a package before pushing him over. Crafty.
4. In case anyone was considering a camel as the test-pet…
5. Kid vs. kid goat? The goat plays dirty. Kid seems to take it well.
6. The dark lord rises… and falls spectacularly.
7. The snack snatch. Baby 0, Rabbit 183
8. It’s a CAT-astrophe…
But in fairness sometimes the retaliation is well-deserved…
And they’re aways gonna be friends in the end…
AAaaawwwwww…
