Yes Joe, but I’d like one that could also sing the high chorus of Bohemian Rhapsody.

If you want to see a fascinating documentary sometime, check this out:
http://www.hbo.com/docs/docuseries/heidifleiss/index.html

A surprisingly nuanced and moving portrait of infamous madam Heidi Fleiss, with much of it involving the problem of what to do with inherited birds.

I haven’t had a pet since the family dog Charlie – decades ago. Had the neighbour’s cats a few years back, and that works well (from a travel standpoint).

A cockatoo might make a good pet – sulfur crested ones are common down here. They can be taught to talk. Live for 70+ years, so the problem is who you pass them on to when you go

It took me close to two years before I was ready to get another cat. Our cat is, frankly, a complete pain and I’m convinced that because of this fact she’ll live forever. She turns into Hannibal Lecter if you try to do anything remotely medical (even administering flea medicine is impossible). So we have an agreement that should she ever get some sort of chronic condition that requires daily intervention, we’re just going to put her down.

Although I tell myself that I don’t hold the same level of affection for her that I did for other pets, I can’t kid myself. I still love her, albeit on her own terms, not mine. I know when that day comes, it’s going to be awful. I can only hope she dies of something quickly.

I’d love to get a dog, but we travel just enough that I would feel guilty about leaving it for weeks at a time. It’s hard enough doing that to the cat.

I’m sorry about your dogs, Joe. But I know they’ve had great lives.

We’ve had dogs we’ve put down because they were fading fast. In one case, something happened to our first dog, another shelter case, and he suddenly got very aggressive, including to me. A second was virtually blind when we got her, but she was whacked with cancer (it turns out that if a female doesn’t get fixed young, the chance of cancer increases dramatically) and went down hill very quickly. I recall Muff’s last full day; she seemed a bit better than before so we put off bringing her into the vet for a day, and she was able to sit out in the spring sun for much of that last afternoon.

My wife still misses Ollie, her first puppy (this one a pure-bred). He died badly. He didn’t feel well (he periodically had fits, but that was controlled with medication), but the vet and everyone else said he probably just had a bug. At 1am he woke up and started shaking. He promptly went into cardiac arrest. We drove like maniacs searching for the 24-hour animal hospital (it’s on Central Avenue at Tuckahoe Road), but he was long dead, even though his heart beat every once in a while. He was four. He apparently had a really nasty but rare virus about which nothing could have been done.