Richard and Michael had pets. There were the dogs, Lucy and Billy, and up to three cats at any one time. Then of course there were Paul and Beverley with their unique exotic menagerie, while our next door neighbours, Alf and Gwen, had Kim, the pure white Samoyed.All of which constituted, to Barbara and me, a real bone of contention. “Why can’t we have a pet?” we’d demand repeatedly, usually of Mum who, we intuitively realised, was the parent with the ultimate veto on such matters. Besides, we knew she was quite besotted with Kim. (“What about a Samoyed, Mum?”)
“Pets are hard work,” she’d say. “They don’t simply look after themselves.”
This, I knew, was true. As a three year old I had had two pet goldfish, Freddie and Feefie, but in all the confusion, excitement and upheaval surrounding the birth of my sister, they had been completely forgotten about, and had died.
However, I was older now, I reasoned, and sufficiently responsible to be able to take care of a pet, even one a good deal more responsive, communicative and intelligent than a fish.
In the end, in a gesture which, in hindsight, I can interpret as plainly palliative, my mum, astonishingly, relented. I arrived home from school one afternoon to find a large wooden hutch in the back garden. Inside was a pure white rabbit which, while not the dog or cat I had really wanted, was unquestionably a pet.
“We’ll call him Snowy,” I decided at once.
“Snowy-Snowball!” countered my sister, in a plaintive whine. For some reason, she regarded the rabbit as hers, and hers alone, and would continue doing so regardless of being told otherwise.
Although Snowy/Snowy-Snowball would doubtless have been happier with a harem of pliant does at his disposal (not to mention a single, unequivocal name), he appeared to be reasonably contented (at any rate, as far as it is possible to judge such things with rodents). He had plenty to eat, enjoyed the run of the back garden for much of the day, and was relaxed when handled (other than by my dad, who for some reason seemed to imagine that rabbits enjoyed being picked up by the ears).
One morning, however, we awoke to find that Snowy had seen fit to abscond, and was nowhere to be found. Dad consoled my sister by assuring her that Snowy was probably fine; he had no doubt gone to join his wild bunny friends out in the bush. By this stage, however, Barbara had become more or less immune to parental platitudes, and tended to turn to me whenever she wanted an unvarnished version of things. “Where’s my bunny gone?” she asked me.
“He wasn’t your bunny!” I retorted, and, with considerable relish, went on to tell her that I imagined Snowy (“Snowy-Snowball!”) had either been run over by a car or else killed by a dog or cat.
After receiving this intelligence with surprising equanimity, Barbara nodded thoughtfully, then declared, “It’s his own silly fault for running away”.
Nevertheless, I suspect she nurtured a vague hope that she might awake one morning to find him nestling cosily in the corner of his hutch. After a couple of weeks or so, however, it was clear even to Barbara that Snowy-Snowball would not be returning. It was then that we decided to put in a joint bid for a replacement – “one that can live in the house,” we suggested, “so it won’t run away”.
Unfortunately, Mum was not so easily cajoled this time. In fact, the task proved impossible. She merely sat back (she seemed to be doing an awful lot of sitting these days), hugged her enormous belly, and said, “I’m afraid there’s going to be a much more important new addition soon”.
Barbara looked mystified, but I knew exactly what Mum was on about. I looked resentfully down at Barbara, recalling the time when she had been an “important new addition”. Considering the way that things had turned out since, I would much have preferred a puppy, and as I reflected on the likely contents of my mum’s gargantuan stomach I found it difficult to suppress a flicker of resentment and unease.
