We are a no pet house.

I have terrible allergies to animal dander and so does my husband. I’m worse with cats, he’s worse with dogs, but we’re both  hopeless cases. We can’t even sleep with regular down pillows; they leave us with stuffy noses! In my case, I have a family history of developing allergies with exposure. That’s a fancy way of saying that I have allergies because my neighbors had kittens.

You see, when I was five or six, our next door neighbors had a litter of kittens. Is there anything more adorable than kittens? Those tiny mews, miniature teeth, little paws, just widdle widdle balls of fur! Little girls can’t resist the cute! My parents tried to warn me that if I did I’d develop life-long allergies, but how does that even compute to a six-year-old? I would sneak over every day to play with those kittens. My eyes started itching. I started sneezing. But those kittens were so adorable I couldn’t stop.  Every time I went over my body started reacting more and more. Every exposure to other neighbors’ pets increased my allergies, to the point where my eyes and throat would swell closed, endangering my life.

I stopped touching animals.

Now I have kids and I know that they bear the same kind of allergic risk. With too much exposure they will also develop life-long allergies.  That’s why even though my then six-year-old came home with giant tears in his eyes begging for a kitten I said a firm, “No.”  Under no circumstances.

We’ll never have a pet in our house.

At this point the idea of a dog or a cat in the house seems like the height of crazy. I have a barely toilet trained four-year-old and a newborn, the last thing I want is another creature whose toilet habits I have to monitor. Even an outside dog terrifies me with extra responsibility. And can you really have an only-outside dog? Something tells me that’s probably impossible. So we live without animals, and that’s just fine with me.

What about you? Are you a one pet, no pet, or a menagerie type of house? Can you imagine life without the companionship of a pet?

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