We don't have any pets any more, not since my sister's ancient goldfish Aladdin passed away earlier in the year. For most of my life we've only ever had goldfish, with two exceptions: a canary that we had when I was very little called Sunny (who I don't remember), and an albino rabbit called Hazel (my sister named her after the rabbit in Watership Down, and yes the Hazel in Watership Down was male) which we had for a year before some fatal condition developed.
Part of me likes the idea of having an intelligent pet, like a dog or a cat, but at the same time I have doubts that I would be able to take care of them properly. And plus I tend to have allergic reactions to animal hair, especially to dogs. I thought that cats were a big problem too, but when I stayed with my friends in Stirling in August I passed three days at their place with not even a sneeze at their cat Roo. When/if I settle down somewhere in the future maybe a cat could be possible...
In any case, all this is just a little preamble, a prologue for a conversation I heard at the supermarket checkout on Saturday as I was helping my mum unload the trolley. On the next checkout a grandfather was talking to his grand-daughter (she was around six or seven) as he unloaded his cart.
"...oh, and here's the cat food; what's that cat of yours called again Jenny?" She told him, and I thought I had misheard - evidently so did he, because he followed that up with, "What was that love, she's called Twinkle?"
"No grandad," she said, speaking slowly, as if to someone who was stupid, "She's called Pringles..."
A sign of the times I guess...
In unrelated news there were calls today for British schools to do more to combat childhood obesity.
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