“Man, oh, man, it’s raining cats and dogs!” says my son, T.J., coming in from a run in the rain.  We’re spending a weekend at the family cottage, just the two of us, with our dogs and his cat.

“Shhhhhh!” I say.  “Don’t let the boys hear you say that about dogs and cats.  They’ll want to go out and bark at them.”

It is quite a menagerie, what with both of the dogs and the cat.  I’m just glad that I left our cat at home with a big bunch of food and a bowl of water.  He’ll be fine for the weekend, and happy that he doesn’t have to put up with the others.
 

“Cats are easier to take care of,” I comment to him at some point during the weekend.  “And, cheaper, too.” 

“Most cats, that’s true.  But not Bugsy.”

“Why, is he sick?” I ask, worried immediately about my grand-cat.

“No,” says T.J.  “He’s just an expensive cat.  You’ll see why sooner or later.”

I’ve done a little research, and know that pet ownership is terribly expensive.  One source I checked (peteducation.com) has an article written by a guy that apparently has nothing better to do than keep track of every piece of hair-collecting tape and every furniture-scratch-repair cost.  He’s figured that over a 14 year life span, a cat cost him $7,713, and a dog cost him $12,468. 

I found an ASPCA figure for cats that seems to be in that same ball park, and I found an American Kennel Club figure for dogs that is also in the same neighborhood, so I guess the guy is about right, shocking as that may seem. 

So, if an ordinary cat costs nearly $8,000 to own (and that doesn’t include any major purchase price) the logic of owning pets slips even farther down the good-sense pole.

But little Bugsy is a sweet and good little cat, full of fun and always picking good-natured “fights” with Wesley and Wrigley, the dogs, so they are always romping all over the house, which soon fills up with hair.  When we leave the cottage, we always have enough hair to sweep up to make a couple of new pillows, which I sell on E-bay for thousands of dollars and use to pay for more pets and new vacuum cleaners. Sure.

They’re worth the price, these pets. 

I wake up early one morning, hearing a strange rattling noise coming from the back of the house, from the bathroom.  I walk quietly back there to see what’s going on, and there is Bugsy, up on the top of the toilet, reaching down with one front paw, pushing on the handle.  After a couple of tries, he succeeds, and the toilet flushes. 

Bugsy leaps down onto the seat, and begins to play gleefully in the swirling water with his front paw.

When T.J. gets out of bed an hour later I tell him.

“You won’t believe what Bugsy did!” I say.  “He flushed the toilet!”

“He does it all the time.  That’s what I was talking about.  You should see my water bills!  They’re out of sight.”

                                   Jim Whitehouse

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