The Comfort of Pets
Pets can reduce our stress in the most unexpected of ways ...
Our neighbours and best friends eventually moved on to New Zealand, where the only dangerous creatures are politicians and health and safety inspectors.
We then braced ourselves as the new couple, two teenagers and a pretty little dog moved in. Doing the neighbourly thing, we waited till they finished their unpacking and then took them a pecan pie as a welcome-to-the-neighbourhood gift. As I approached the door, their cute little dog dashed out from a shrub and bit me on the leg. Instinctively, I kicked out, thwacked the poor little sod in the face and he scampered off, yapping and yowling in pain. The front door flew open and voice sounding like a bandsaw going through a frozen chicken assaulted our ears: “What the hell are you doing, abusing our sweet Mitzi? Get the hell out of here or we’ll call the police!”
My wife and I spun to look at one another in confusion. As I did, the pie flew off the pie-dish and into the pimply face of a boy who’d appeared at my side. He frantically scratched at his burning face and splattered his sister (I supposed) and mother with colourful food, turning their matching, pristine white dresses into tie-dyed imitations of that worn at Woodstock in 1969. But today is 2024 in Westmount, Montreal’s trendiest suburb.
I started to apologise while my wife, Gladys, pulled on my arm. “When you’re in a hole, David, stop digging,” she said to me. I faltered just long enough for darling Mitzi to have regained his (or her?) confidence and took another snap at me. The empty pie-dish proved an effective bat and he ran off again, whimpering. I turned to see a beetroot-coloured face, atop a potato body, contorted in apoplexy, yelling at me for savaging his family, destroying his property and causing a menace in his neighbourhood.
“Your neighbourhood?” I demanded. “You’ve been here five minutes and it’s yours?”
“David, David, how’s it going?” asked Pedro, arriving as quiet as a cloud. He is one of the two police we employ to keep riffraff out of our neighbourhood.
“He’s an absolute …” started Mr Beetroot, before Pedro cut him off.
“One at a time, please, sir” said Pedro, looking at me as if Mr Beetroot didn’t exist. This momentary lapse in proceedings gave my seething brain the space it needed.
“It’s okay, Pedro, we won’t press charges. We’ll go.” I winked at him and he smiled.
“Okay, Mr Preston.” I could see the Beetroot family standing there, open-mouthed, as Pedro drove off and Gladys and I closed the door on the spacious peace of our castle.
Our darling pet, always hungry for a rodent, was easy to entice over our fence to feast on a rat I tossed on the neighbour’s trampoline. He then curled up in the sun. Perhaps fifteen minutes later, pimple-face leapt up, had a quick bounce and then screamed and ran. Mitzi ran in the opposite direction and tried to bother this strange creature with no legs to bite. This was the perfect opportunity to nail two dead rats to the fence and call to Samuel. He slithered off the trampoline, up the fence and devoured his tasty meal. He then lay along the top of the fence in the sun, a Mitzi-shaped protrusion distorting his slender body. By now, the whole Beetroot clan, or whatever they were called, had inspected the empty trampoline and then the girl let out a banshee squeal. They stood there, open-mouthed and staring at the long reptile on the fence.
They rushed inside and, within the week, the removal van was back and they were gone.
Our pet python reduces our stress so well – we do love Samuel so much.[1]
[1] The subject for the Carindale Writers Group was about 500 words on The Role of Pets in Reducing Stress. I suspected that most of the stories would be loving, cozy stories so I chose to write something different. This was it.