The Pet-less Life

You know what the best thing in the world is?
I mean the simply best thing!

Better than cool breeze on a summer night, or owning a Ferrari (or a ninja), or a candle-light dinner with your loved one, or finding all signals green when running late....

It is- being greeted delightedly by a furry animal when you return home.

For some, the wide-eyed admiration of a dog or the lazy affection of a cat, are foreign and incomprehensible experiences; who’d always prefer to consider animals as just biting hazards and flea sanctuaries.
But then there are some, whose life in a hostel, away from home is lustre-less due to this very reason- that a vital element of their lives is missing- a pet.
For me, the change was drastic. As I always let my dogs sleep on my bed back at home (yeah, ok, hygiene freaks can wrinkle up their noses in disgust), I got this new-found freedom of stretching my legs till the foot of the bed, because I'd gotten into the habit of sleeping curled up like a dog myself.
It had begun with my letting Candy, a li'l pup (then) sleep at the foot of my bed. But when she started growing bigger & bigger, and I adopted Sher & Shiney (two quarrelsome canines), I noticed that I was getting outnumbered and cornered on my own bed. There used to be squabbles as to who gets to use my pillow- and believe me, I never won. But the discomfiture is worth it when you are woken with a loving lick on the face (hygiene freaks are free to puke now) each morning.

Pet owners also find eating without being stared at by two unblinking, beseeching eyes (in my case, six) an abnormal way to dine. As for me, I could hardly get up in the middle of the night for a midnight snack, without having all three of my little followers clamouring around me to see what's in the fridge.

Their jumping around in mud in rains; howling at midnight at some distant disturbance in the dog world; chasing mice (if one was unfortunate enough to enter our house); and a million other trivial and endearing pursuits have now become an inseparable part of my life. A pet keeps you away from depression and some researches say, they also keep your blood pressure in check. So all you finicky hygiene maniacs, one thing, that though they may not be the cleanest of all companions, it's always harder to live away from pets.


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This one has been published in Echo, the symbiosis hostel newsletter. There was a picture of me with a dog, next to this article... yay! =D