I like to think I'm a good and agreeable citizen of my family.
Except for a few quirky things.
I have been known to binge-watch Netflix when I could be starting dinner. I tend to sound like a loud barking seal when I sneeze, eight times in a row. I have a strong startle reflex and scream at odd and unfortunate moments.
And I have trouble sharing my home with animals.
I know from the get-go this makes me out to be cruel and un-American. In a nation of people who keep 78 million dogs as pets, 86 million cats and 5 million rabbits, I would seem to be the outlier.
But hold on, lest this get re-posted on the Animal Protective League page: I didn't say I don't like animals. I am an ethical vegan, after all. I gave to the Happy Trails Animal Farm Sanctuary last year.
I'm the one who suggested we get Toby the dog and Hope the cat for the kids. This is despite having mild allergies to animals and bugs. This is despite the fact that I don't necessarily believe in sharing indoor space with creatures who not so long ago roamed the prairie in packs. This is despite the reality that dogs and cats tend to romp in flea-infested dirt and tick-infested grasses, and then bring it all inside where they try to climb on my favorite chair in the living room.
This has lately been a heightened issue in our house as our beloved Toby _ and yes, I love him, too _ is aging.
"Mom, don't you want to let him snuggle on the furniture in his dying day?" beseeches my youngest one night as we are heading to bed. "He would be so much more comfortable. Just look at him."
I do look at Toby, an adorable cocker spaniel with sad cocker eyes, sitting in his perfectly fine dog bed in the corner. And then I remember. Fleas, ticks and dirt. Fleas, ticks and dirt.
"I said from day one he couldn't be on the furniture," I say.
"Can't we just let him have that one chair?" my daughter pleads.
I try to tell them it's a slippery slope.
"He sits in that one chair and before you know it, he's on the beds," I say. "And anyway, what's wrong with the bed he has?"
They look at me like I'm one of those bad chicken farmers.
I do love Toby. And to prove that I do, I start letting him sleep on my side of the bed, not in the bed, mind you, but beside the bed, on a nice fluffy rug.
And then for a few mornings in a row, I wake with bug bites and not just bites, but welts. At one count, 15. I think they are oak mites, like my doctor also thinks. But then one night, determined to make positive identification, I crawl around the house with my iPhone flashlight, looking for signs of infestation. Sure enough, on Toby's dog bed, which explains why the poor pup had so easily shifted to the rug next to me, there they are: A circus of fleas jumping up and down like trapeze artists.
I do not adopt an I-told-you-so stance with my family at this point, which is not necessary anyway. There's nothing like everybody in the family being asked every few days to help vacuum and mop up tiny bugs and their hatching eggs for weeks on end, to deliver the lesson of co-existence with animals. We are all rallied around not only the Electrolux and the Dawn dishwashing liquid, but Toby, and deciding whether it's time for a new groomer, who was apparently misguiding my husband on timely application of flea meds.
"I think this proves if we are going to live with animals in the house, we have to be more diligent about a few things," I say to everybody at dinner one night.
At which point a flea jumps off my arm.
"Mom, maybe you're the one carrying fleas," my daughter says.
Funny, Emily. Really funny.
