Animal Lover

The most commonly accepted phrase in the English language that makes it sound like you have sex with animals.

My wife maintains a bird feeder on our backyard crepe myrtle. It’s situated so that we can watch the birds from our kitchen window, and part of my morning routine is watching the cardinals and nuthatches and mourning doves feed and squabble as I drink my tea. There’s also a fat squirrel who has been trying to find a perch on the feeder from which to gorge, but the design prevents him (or her, I don’t know, but I always assume squirrels are male because I am a squirrel chauvinist) from getting ready access to the feed.

Instead, he descends from the branch just above to the top of the narrow feeder. Then he looks down the feeder to the bird perches below from which the birds get their food. He tries to figure out a way to get to the feeding perches without falling, but he’s too big and the tube holding the seeds is too long and too slick. He knows this. So here’s what he figured out: if he sits on top of the feeder and moves his bodyweight back and forth enough times, eventually the feeder will begin swinging just enough that a few seeds and corn kernels will fall from feeder and he can scamper down to the ground and grab some grub

Pictured: bird feeder. Not pictured: squirrel.

I’m forever impressed with animal ingenuity, kindness, and grace. There’s a video going around of a pet owner cutting a treat into two unequal sizes. The family dog watches, then selects the larger piece to bring over to the “his little pig friend,” then actually pets the cat on the head, and returns to get its own, much smaller piece. Is the dog being kind or kind of dumb? Hard to know. But it’s difficult to tell sometimes with people, too.

Another video I saw yesterday showed a cat “playing a trick” on the family dog, a la Garfield. The dog was asleep on the couch, the cat walked up to the couch and tickled the dog’s paw to wake him, then hid below the dog’s line of sight so that the dog would not be able to tell who did it. I mean, that’s A-lister stuff.

My own cat and I have taken our relationship to the next level of late. He’s an old guy now, twelve years old and he’s got a little heart problem that we control with medication. For the first many years of his life, he was aloof, haughty even. Didn’t care much for affection and if you approached him at the wrong time, he would simply excuse himself from your presence. Very politely, but still, he made his feelings regarding your presence known. Now, in his senior years, he has become quite affectionate, which has led to some meaningful conversations of late:

Me: are you a good kitty?

Him: I am. I am a good ktty.

Me: I agree. Meeting adjourned.

I’ve always enjoyed animals but I would never have described myself as, like, an animal lover. (Also, let’s be honest – the phrase “animal lover” is pretty gross.) That seems to have changed for me over the last couple months, an unexpected side effect, I think, of becoming vegetarian.

My vegetarianism began after a recent physical, in which my doctor told me my cholesterol’s getting high. “What can I do about that?” I asked, thinking she’d just put me on a pill. I do enjoy a good pill.

“You can cut out meat and dairy,” she said.

“That’s not going to happen,” I said.

But then it did, at least the meat part. I figured maybe I’d give vegetarianism a shot for a week or two and see how it goes. Turns out, it’s been surprisingly easy. It’s early days still but I don’t miss meat, so I’ve been sticking with it. I didn’t do it for ethical reasons or anything like that. Mostly just as an experiment for my own selfish interests, but this enhanced affection for animals has popped up.

This may sound stupid, but I maybe part of me has been reluctant to engage too much with the animal world because I subconsciously always felt guilty about the fact that I was probably going to eat one of their friends. Now that I’m no longer eating animals, the guilt is reduced so I’m able to feel much more connected to them. Not that I was planning on eating my pets, but I think you get what I’m saying. It’s kind of nice.

By the way, this is not a post about me encouraging you to become a vegetarian. I don’t care what you do. Moreover, I don’t know if I’ll remain a vegetarian forever. Maybe, maybe not. But I do like when a side effect is on the positive side for a change. And I like figuring out new stuff about myself. As for that greedy squirrel,  he better watch his step around that bird feeder or he’s going to find himself on the receiving of a very nice hug.