My Animals & Other Family

As Reggie Perrin's son-in-law might have said, I'm not an animal person. This may come as a bit of a surprise to those of you who know (and if you don't know now, you only need to make it to the end of this sentence to find out) that our household 'boasts' two rabbits, two rats, two guinea pigs, two gerbils and approximately five cats. Nevertheless, and despite the above carnival of monsters, I'm really, honestly, not an animal person.

When I was young (yes, here we go again with the "when I was young" routine) we didn't have any pets. Actually that's not 100% accurate, we did briefly have two goldfish. Their rather short life cycle at the Curnow household saw them rapidly progress from swimming round a bowl to swimming round the U-bend. But other than those two unfortunates (and curse me for a heartless fiend, do you know I can't even remember their names!) we never had pets. I don't mention this in a "get your violins out and weep for me" sort of sense; merely to further establish my credentials as "man most likely to have a menagerie in his sitting room".

I suspect that I'm probably just one of nature's non-animal lovers, but on the other hand (if I might just lie down on this couch for a moment, doctor) it might be linked to something traumatic in my childhood. At this point can I just add that, probably connected with the Douglas Adams kick I was on last week, I am now hearing Gag Halfrunt saying "Vell, Andrew's just zis guy, you know". Anyway, when I was really quite little my grandparents had a dog. This was during the period when we (by which I mean my parents, my older brother and I) lived in a self-contained flat on the top floor of their house, and one night said dog leapt onto little Andrew's bed waking him up and causing a good deal of screaming. Although I can't have been any older than three at the time, I think I remember this horrifying incident - I qualify that remark only because I have heard the tale so often that I might have just made up a picture to go with the story. At any rate, although it may be a fake memory, it was certainly a real event.

Regardless, though, of whether I remember the above anecdote, I certainly do remember the dog in question, and to be honest I don't think I was particularly enamoured of him even before the bed-jumping incident. This dog was called Bing and I remember him as being very tall and skinny - I assume he was a whippet, as I can't somehow picture my grandparents owning a greyhound; and for some reason I picture him standing or maybe sitting near the fire in gran's kitchen, thus somehow preventing me from getting warm. All very strange, and I'm sure there's a small (or not so small) fortune waiting there for some canny therapist.

Whether those various Bing-related moments put me off animals at a young age, or whether conversely my being uncomfortable with animals at a young age put me off Bing, I wouldn't like to say. Even now, though, I don't particularly like dogs - with the exception (of course!) of my in-laws' three dogs and my brother's dog. Those particular four canines are an absolute joy to be around and are delightful in every way. Yes indeed. But apart from those few exceptions I do not like dogs. There is an irony here - my daughter (who rather stubbornly does like dogs, a trait she certainly hasn't inherited from me) sponsors a dog with the Dogs Trust (formerly the National Canine Defence League) and consequently our car boasts an unmissable yellow sticker proclaiming the wonders of these four-legged devils.

With the exception of the cats, though, all the animals presently residing at Curnow Towers fall under the auspices of Mrs and Miss Curnow. I don't really mind giving in and agreeing to house various different-sized bundles of fur, and I do normally relent sooner or later (in the case of the first rabbit, mind you, placards had to be employed before I folded); but I always make the proviso that I don't personally have to look after them. I might, as it happens, occasionally top up the water bottles or the food bowls but I am proud to say that as at time of writing I have never, ever had to personally use a wallpaper scraper to assist in the removal of ground-in rat/rabbit/guinea-pig/gerbil poo from the bottom of their cage.

All eight of the above-- I probably ought to clarify that number. Like Noah we have two of every animal. Unlike Noah we have two of the same sex of every animal, except in the case of the rabbits, and that was a mistake. The first ikkle bunny we bought was, allegedly, a girl. After a while it seemed that 'she' was a little lonely, and that perhaps 'she' would flourish better with a little friend, so we trotted back to the garden centre to get 'her' a little playmate. (Those with an eye for these things will probably have noticed that the inverted commas are already telling the story.) Within about thirty seconds of introducing honourable number one rabbit to honourable number two rabbit it was quite clear that (a) the new rabbit was indeed a little girl; but (b) the first rabbit was most definitely not.

For about a minute it was hysterically funny watching the attempted sexual awakening of rabbit number one as he chased after his would-be paramour. But after that first minute of hysteria, the novelty rapidly wore off. Without further ado, and before there was any chance of the rabbits going at it like rabbits, we took rabbit number one to the vet. I'm not quite sure whether they remove the equipment or just the urges (or both) but I can report that we still have just the two rabbits some six months later, so it has clearly worked. (Incidentally, any residual hysteria at the situation was completely swept away at the sight of the vet's bill.)

Our eight furry friends live in a high-rise collection of hutches and cages in the sitting-room. The rats & gerbils will remain there; the guinea-pigs and rabbits will probably decamp to the garden when the warm weather comes - or rather, IF the warm weather comes (this is Devon after all). It might seem a bit bizarre, and indeed my mother-in-law has on several occasions 'hinted' that perhaps the shed would be a better place for them. There is, however, a good reason for not moving them (two good reasons, if you count the fact that the shed is an absolute tip and already full of, well, of junk mainly). By having the animals where we can see them it ensures that our daughter doesn't forget about them after the first day or so of excitement - in the shed we would be all too likely to see the 'out of sight, our of mind' syndrome develop. As it is, she sees them all every day. She may not be able to fully help muck them out yet, or be able to reach to sort out the water-bottles or the food; but she can make funny faces at them through the bars, and she can keep an eye on them when we let them out in the sitting-room to stretch their legs. She can also help give the cats a smack on the nose when they take to sitting on top of the gerbils' cage!

My daughter, who I think we have already established does not take after me in this respect, is very keen on animals, and not just in the rather predictable "ooh they're cuddly" sort of way. This is probably best illustrated by our rats, who were the first of our menagerie to arrive after the ubiquitous cats. The inspiration for getting rats as house pets (which to my mind is an idea indicating some level of mental imbalance, but there you go) came from one of our neighbours who, well, who has rats as house pets. My daughter was soon keen to get one of her own, and I was unfortunately outnumbered by the fact that my wife felt the same way. So that was that, pretty much, and we soon had two small white rats.

I know very little about rats even now, and at the time I knew only two things - one, there was a giant rat in "Doctor Who" (not strictly relevant, I grant you) and second, euch!!! They're rats!!! But what I did find interesting, when telling people that we had rats as pets was that there were two clear reactions. The first was the same as mine ("but... they're rats!"); and into this category you could probably fit most people - most of the family, including my Mum who, the Lord God Made Them All notwithstanding, always used to visit us with the cheerful greeting, "Are the rats dead yet?" The other reaction was the slightly more surprising "Yes, me too." One guy at work in fact supplied us with some spare cages, explaining that they were his daughter's when she had kept rats, and what lovely animals they were too! The whole 'rat-keeping' thing seems to be one of those secrets that people don't normally talk about. Even as you read this, perhaps you are in the company of another rat owner...

Having acquired two rats, however, we then unexpectedly acquired a third from a friend whose children had thought they wanted one but then quickly went off the idea (maybe they kept it in the shed). And so we gained a large, male, rat who my daughter decided to rename... Andrew.

The average life-expectancy for a rat is three or four years, apparently - long enough to spread Bubonic Plague but not long enough to celebrate many birthdays - and in due course Andrew Rat fell off his perch. I'm not being disrespectful here, there was an actual plank of wood in his cage to entertain him, on which he would sometimes perch, and it was from there that he slumped onto the sawdust-covered floor of his cage. He wasn't, alas, pining for the fjords but had instead expired and gone to meet his maker. He had rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. He was (say it with me) an ex-rat.

My daughter was upset. (Which makes my Pythonesque mockery in the preceding paragraph in rather poor taste I suppose - oops!) It seems fairly obvious, in retrospect, that she would be, but at the time I was a little taken aback at the strength of her reaction. My wife told her in the evening, after school, and she was alright at that point, a little subdued perhaps, but slightly comforted by the fact that we had buried the little squeaker in the front garden and had promised to let her buy a special plant to mark the spot (we did, by the way, and it does, and I can see it from where I'm sat now in the daytime). The next day however, rather unfortunately, they were talking about animals at school and when my wife came to collect her in the afternoon she was told that our daughter had burst into tears. Because of a rat.

I won't say she's been emotionally scarred forever, or traumatised beyond repair, and probably within a day or so she had got over it more or less; but occasionally, for quite some time afterwards, she would mention her Andrew Rat with a wistful tone. She would remember the time he bit through the plastic house he was living in, or the way he would grip food in his mouth and reverse back into his cage and horde it, or the fact that he was actually quite happy to do this same hording trick with virtually anything you offered him, edible or otherwise, with the result that his little stash was partly food, partly bits of playing cards, or envelopes, or hairbands.

As I mentioned above, the expected life of a rat isn't long ("rat born of a, er, rat has but a short time to live...") and of course I am now acutely aware that our two remaining rats must be coming up to their second birthday already. My Mum has, as you can imagine, stopped greeting us in quite the same way, but nevertheless I do find that the inevitable demise of not just the rats but of all our furry bundles of joy weighs on my mind a little now. I caught my wife peeking into the rat cage earlier this evening, and she admitted that she was making sure they were both still alive. They are, you may (or may not, depending on your feelings in the matter) be pleased to hear. But one day they won't be.

I can't say I'm looking forward to the deaths of the animals - I also can't honestly say that I think I will be particularly moved (again, the cats are the exception here but I'm not going there just now) but I know my daughter will be, and I will be moved by that. It's probably a good lesson for her to learn, particularly if she genuinely does want to work with animals when she grows up. And it does at least prove to me that she doesn't just want animals because they're cute and cuddly. But because she cares.

17th January 2004