What animals make the best/worst pets?
Pets have a way of revealing the shape of a household.
We have usually had both a dog and a cat, and I have always liked the balance. Dogs are wonderful for people who want companionship and daily interaction. They ask something of you: time, training, exercise, money, presence. Cats offer affection too, but with more independence. Together, they seem to make room for different kinds of companionship within the one home.
What I have especially loved is how naturally our animals have shared life with us. When they grow up together, they tend to get on well. I usually write in a small sunny room in our house, and it is quite common for all of us to end up there at once: people, dog, cat, each settled into a place. It is a small picture of domestic peace. Togetherness.
That is why I think the best pets are not simply the most beautiful or unusual. They are the ones that can be woven into the shared life of a home.
I think of friends who had an exotic parrot that had already been re-homed once. It was a beautiful bird, but hard to live with. It bonded closely with the husband and saw the wife as a rival. She was patient for a long time, but eventually that patience wore thin. The bird had to be re-homed again.
It was not a bad animal. That is the point. The worst pets are not usually bad in themselves. More often, they are poor fits for ordinary family life. In this case, the bird’s need for intense, exclusive companionship placed strain on the household rather than adding to its shared life. Fragmentation.
That seems to me to be the difference. The best pets become part of a home’s rhythms and ordinary pleasures. The worst, however beautiful, ask for a kind of attachment that works against the life of the whole.
In the end, that may be the simplest test. Not just whether an animal is appealing, but whether it helps make a home feel more fully like home.
The Afterword 
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