Having kids means eventually you get pets too

Tamsin Parker - 30 Jan 16

Have I ever mentioned that I was my local town’s Animal Welfare Queen 1984? Yes folks you heard it here first and I have the photographs to prove it. So from travelling to carnival to carnival, astride a giant feathered swan on my festival float, not winning many prizes, because I was a funny looking little creature with the grace of the Nutty Professor rather than a Nutcracker ballerina, to raising more than a grand for the local charity, I’ve always had a tenuous link with animal welfare.
So as a kid, from providing a home to an escaped canary who found solace stealing food from our guinea pig cage outside, to trying to revive it with a hairdryer when it fell off its perch some years later, (sure I read that you could do that with ailing hamsters once – it didn’t work of course, it remained dead, just dead with moving feathers), I’ve clearly always had a lot in common with Doctor Dolittle.
And that’s continued into adulthood. Picture the scenario: as a parent you go into the local pet shop to buy straw and rabbit food and you come out with a guinea pig. You see that’s the risk when you’re a Mum. Before you know it, despite your adamancy that:
“No you’re not having a rabbit/dog/cat/parrot/ hamster because you won’t look after it/feed it/walk it or pay for it,” you’re knee deep in sawdust and your rubber gloved hands are holding a rabbit shit filled spade clearing out a £150 hutch, while you’re trying to stop £12 Thumper from escaping into next door’s garden because your little angel is too busy watching TV to come out and help.
And why is this? Why? There are two reasons, the main one being the beautiful smile you get from the sheer joy of an eight-year-old going to the pet shop to pick up their beautiful birthday present rabbit and secondly that having a child gives you carte blanche to be a child again. Hence Patch the newly purchased guinea pig who I can’t even blame Maisie for.
And don’t get me wrong, Maisie’s not so keen on the responsibility of cleaning out animal poo but she loves playing with her ever growing menagerie, so as much as its a pain in the butt spending my Saturday morning cleaning them out the pleasure from seeing Maisie with them definitely outweighs trying to free Fluffy the rabbit, whose got himself trapped behind a bike in the shed again.
Beware though when you hear:”Mummy, Fluffy is trying to burrow on Patch,” you need to move quickly to stop the rabbit trying to bang the arse off the guinea pig and remind yourself to make sure they’re not brought out to play at the same time unless you want to defy genetics and be the owner of the world’s first rab-pig or guinea-it.
And I’m sure most of us parents have at least one or animal story like that. From my friend who came into work with a ‘flying’ tortoise that had landed in her garden after being dropped by what she thinks was a crow, to the same friend who bought fish for her kids that subsequently kept dying as soon as she put them in water because the pet shop (clearly not a very good one) had been selling her warm water fish and not telling her.
My next animal story will be about being the owner of the first rabbit in the country to have had a full set of Rylan style veneers because apparently Fluffy, the two-year-old Lionhead rabbit may have to have dental work. Hold the front page – the Sun, I may have a story for you, although you’ll have to deal with Fluffy’s nine-year-old agent, who will be keen to talk cash for the exclusive.
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Tamsin Parker

Tamsin is a 40-year-old bleached teethed, bleached hair, tattooed eye-browed single Mum of one who still wishes she was 25. A journalist and PR specialist Tamsin loves family, friends, football and fashion in that order. Her raison d'etre is nine-year-old Maisie Mae.

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