Pet tragedies in the Mattar Household

After the fifth time our pet bunny Fluffy (how creative) had violently smothered her babies to death, I was holding my dad’s hand asking him to accompany me to the mental hospital to admit Fluffy for psychotic tendencies. “She’s MAD, Baba! It’s out of control. She squashed them!”

“Oooooooh look how cuuute!” we had cooed and aaaaaaaahed over the hairless blind creatures petting them repeatedly with our fingers through the mesh wire.

“We’re going to have so many raaaaabits!” Not so much.

Next day: 8 baby bunnies found suffocated to death by big mothers fluffy butt.
Oh, the tragedy! We dragged friends and family one by one to point at the murderer in shock and horror telling them how horrible she was, secretly breathing sighs of relief that our own mother was sane and never sat on us.

Years later, I found out that we had imprinted our human smell all over the offspring and the mother wanted nothing to do with them anymore.

All the while, we had judged her for being un-maternal, and not knowing what a wonderful gift children were, it turned out that we were the real culprits.

I feel really bad now. Ignorant monkeys that we were, we killed 5 generations of rabbits.

Several years later, I got really passionately into horses. I went horse-riding every week and had posters, t-shirts, books and horsey stuff coming out of my ears. And so the next logical step was to begin a heavy whining-and-begging campaign on my father, to get my own horse.

“Its only 500 dinaaaaaaaaaars….” I wailed, lying on the floor next to his bed, as he read the newspaper after lunch.

“PLEEAAAASE.” I delivered my ‘please’ composed in several different harmonious notes, and punctuated every once in a while with a desperately groaned “BAAAAAAABA”

He was good. He ignored me so well; I started to think I wasn’t there.

“MAAAAMA?”

“What, Farah?” (Oh good, I exist.)

My mother who tried to speak to me with logic, about how we don’t have a stable, or enough space, and the high costs and demands of maintaining a horse, gave up as soon as I told her, it was going to live in my room, at which point I was swiftly but lovingly kicked out of their bedroom.

My father after feeling bad, that he couldn’t get me my own pet horse, wanted to compensate me with something else.

A few days later, he called me into the garden telling me that he had a big surprise outside. I got so excited I started running around like a headless chicken, putting on my riding pants and boots so quickly, before he could even say anything. Rushing out the back door, I almost stumbled onto my face heading to the corner of the back yard that I had envisaged as a stable. I stopped dead in my tracks, shocked as my eyes rested on my “surprise”. I was speechless and disappointed beyond belief.

Staring stupidly back at me from my “stable”, chewing some innocent nearby plant, was a scruffy, stinky brown goat. “WHAT??? THIS IS NOT WHAT I ASKED FOR, DAMNIT!”

How the hell am I supposed to ride a goat? It’s going to split in half, and besides my feet are going to be dragging on the floor and the saddle will fall off!

The sad thing is that I actually had this mental conversation after considering for a split second to make do with my consolation prize. I think the sensitive goat felt my dismay, because three weeks later, I was sat down by my mother who told me that Deodorant the goat (I was into sarcasm at an early age) unfortunately was no longer with us. Deodorant had committed suicide by banging her intelligent head into the wall. I felt partially responsible for damaging her self-esteem and blaming her that she wasn’t a horse. But it’s probably for the best that she’s now with God and nobody made her a Ghoozi.

These tragedies resulted in us not having any more pets for years, with the exception of one noisy, insomniac and hyperactive canary, which was later freed by me into the afternoon sky after my sense of righteousness, was aroused by a history lesson on slavery and the writings of John Locke.

The incidental peace and quiet was priceless.