In which Koog gets on a soapbox about the importance of having pets

Anyway, I've been thinking about all these school shootings. Like Nicole, I don't think gun control laws will really help, although I'm not a big fan of guns, I am a big fan of freedom. And besides, guns aren't the problem.

I'm not even sure I agree with Catie that parenting is the problem. I mean, of course people should spend more time with their offspring; absolutely, parents should emphasize responsibility. But there's so much lip service given to kids these days, there has been for the past 15 years and none of that has the right kind of impact. Mostly the Won't Somebody Think of the Children? rhetoric has served to annoy me and people like me.

If I were guessing, which I am because this is my forum, I'd say the trouble is about miscellaneous teen angst. I don't really think the teen shooters are bad, but I think they feel unloved. Don't you remember feeling unloved and invisible as a teen? Maybe the shootings aren't so much cries for help as cries for real attention. I don't know that attention from parents would really be effective. (As a teen, did you want attention from your parents? I didn't think so.)

What helped me with my teen angst, seriously, is having pets. How can you look into a pet's face and not feel loved, needed and valued? How can you care for a pet and not know that you have somebody?

Pets teach responsibility in ways that conversation alone can't; they provide real-life experience. Your pet depends on you for everything, and when you take on a pet, you hold its life in your hands. I am fully aware that some people will never learn the value of another life. However, I think if more parents said yes when their kids asked for a cat-dog-rabbit-bird-mouse-snake, I believe that if more families used pet ownership as a way to teach responsibility, some benefit might be had. The key is that you form a mutual bond with another living thing. That's a critical part of maturing, and if you don't know how to do that, how are you going to function?

Think about it. Every community has an animal shelter, and in some cases a pet might be enough to take the edge off teen angst. Everybody wins.

~~~~~

This message brought to you by my pampered housecats past and present. They have always, always been there when I needed them.

before - after