Playstations and television are replacing pets in the modern home as families discover the hectic pace of their lives leaves no room for animals, according to new research.
Oh, no!
In some cases, children are even turning to virtual pets instead of the real thing.
That may be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
Rudimentary virtual pets such as Tamagotchi continue to sell, and in October Nintendo will release a virtual pet game, Nintendogs, in which virtual dogs will respond to voice commands and bark at Nintendogs on other nearby consoles.
No, I take it back: this is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
[from The Scotsman]
How could anyone not have room in his heart -- and in his home among the DVD players and flatscreen plasma TVs and the Swiss Army Knife USB drives -- for Sam:
Sammy has a better story than many people I know. See, a few years back, a friend of mine overheard, on the bus, an elderly German lady who lived in our neighborhood telling someone about "Sammy" and how she was "a slave to him" (it’s somehow even funnier with her Old World accent). My friend figured she was talking about her husband. She was talking about her cat. And this is that cat.
What happened was that last year, this nice old lady -- whose name, coincidentally, was also Maryann -- was in the hospital for a long time and then ended up having to go to a nursing home or somesuch and couldn’t take the cat with her. The neighbor who’d been looking after Sam was having a hell of a time finding a new home for him, and they were talking about putting him to sleep. There was no way on Earth I was going to let anyone put an animal down merely because a home couldn’t be found for him, so here he is.
Sammy’s been with me for a little over a year now, and my other cats have finally resigned themselves to his presence: Cassie (whom you’ll meet next Friday) has learned to ignore him, though Mrs. Kennedy, in her infinite stupidity, continues to be fascinated by him, keeps trying to make friends with him. Sam, who lived alone with one old lady and no other cats for all of his 14 years before he came here, appears to have no clue what these other furry things are.
I adore Sammy, by the way, but I am not a slave to him. He’s learning to live with that.
1 Comments
Leave a comment