Can I tell you something?
I have chronicled my history of pet ownership in other Laughable Feast posts, but since this essay is about pets I will give you a quick recap.
Throughout the first decade of my life our family home was not a pet-rich environment. We had goldfish that kept dying, small turtles that kept tipping over, farmer ants that possessed great industriousness but little charm, and a fucking parrot who’s name I won’t mention. We also had three dogs that were regular visitors which did not belong to us, but that didn’t prevent me from thinking of them as my own. When we finally did get a dog, it was a black Labrador Retriever named Mercury who belying his name was not very swift, if you catch my drift.