Thinking of Getting a Pet

These days I am thinking of getting a pet. Though I am being opposed by everyone in the family, still I think we should have one.

For a pet I would like to raise a Tiger, a white tiger, I like tigers a lot and would love to have them as pets. The problem is I live in the urban jungle where we don't have enough space for the man himself forget about catering the needs of the animal and also provide protection to myself and others.

I cannot have dog as a pet as Amma does not approves of it. She think it will make the whole place dirty. I am not sure how the two of them would live when I leave the house for work.

I thought of keeping birds, but again she disapproves of it and says that she will open the cage and let them free. She is of the opinion that birds should not be caged and I agree with that. I could have easily had a squirrel as my pet who barged into our home in search for food but yet again I had to let it go.

After a lot of thinking I have narrowed it down to a cat which should be easy to look after and should not cause much trouble. I have also learned that cats unlike dogs needs less attention and can be toilet-trained easily. I am still looking into the prospects of the pros and cons of having a pet and how to take care of it and yes finding a place from where I can bring it home.

My Home: An Animals Sanctuary

The crow was sitting on the grill of our kitchen window and waiting for Amma to put some food for him to eat. He raised his voice too, wanting us to take notice of him. When I asked Amma why you don't give it something to eat. She said that it does not eat anything except non-veg, which are made only on Sundays. It stayed on for a while and then realizing that today is not the day flew away.

This is not the first time when a bird paid a visit to us. There have been several instances in the past too where Amma's flower pots has been used by the pigeons as a maternity ward to deliver their eggs. Though she tried her best to prevent them from laying eggs but she could not stop them. The only problem was the eggs never used to get hatched except one as they were eaten away by crows. The mother bird tried to protect her unborn child but she failed. We too shooed away the crows whenever we found it harassing the mother bird, but it was good in its job of snatching eggs. The one that did hatched was also taken away by them though it did got to live for a few days.

Birds were not the only ones who were paying us a visit, there were other animals too. One fine day very early in the morning, I heard my sister screaming and running away. When I got up from my bed, I heard the sound "meow" and was surprised to find a cat at the end of my bed. We later realized that the cat made an entry through an open bedroom window. Can you imagine a cat intruding in your second floor home from no where. I believe that the cat had come to wake us up when our alarm did not work :)

The animals always preferred to give us a surprise visit. My guess is that the word has spread among the animals that we have been very generous to them. Some believe it and Some don't. It is the skeptics who decides to verify the facts themselves, no wonder every now and then we have a new face to see.

Recently we had a squirrel who managed to enter our house but could not exit it. This one made me ran a lot behind it. This was one of the two squirrels that was often spotted on the tree in front of our home. Never thought it will come so closer to us. It took me hours to capture it with a shoe box. Many times it ran over my leg or try to frighten me by jumping towards me. Finally when I did got hold of it, I thought what a great pet it would make. Amma was watching me and I could see in her eyes what her answer was. I let it go with a heavy heart.

Yesterday too, I saw a pigeon couple checking out our bedroom window to probably build a nest to lay their eggs. It flew away when I got the wind of what was on their mind.

I used to think that to see animals you need to go closer to the nature. Here in my home there is a different story going on, hope the animals are not paying us a visit to see how we live.

What do you think?

PETA & Nudity

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an animal rights organization which keeps demonstrating its protest against the treatment meted out to animals. It is good that someone has decided to stand for the animals who have to suffer at the hands of us (humans).

Though they are doing good work at making people realize that animals also need to being taken care of and look after. They way they make their protest sometime amuses me. There were so many instance when I had seen pictures in newspapers of PETA activists going nude while they protest against the unethical treatment to animals. I can understand their protest, but fail to understand them going nude in more than one instance.

Why does anyone has to go nude when they are protesting? Do they think people wont take notice of such protest unless they show some skin. I appreciate the work that they are doing, but the nudity that comes along turns me off. Come on, you guys are dealing with such a delicate issue, how can one let things go this way as if they are part of promoting a product through commercial gimmicks.

There are ways where one can really make people take notice of the highlighted issues. I believe the best example would be Mahatma Gandhi who happened to toppled the British rule with non-violence and his stayagraha movement. I guess the PETA should learn from this man on how to make people aware of the issues. Showing skin would only attract people who are merely interested in seeing it. This would do no good to the cause. Its time that they get their act together or else people who are really interested in the cause would get disillusioned with it.