Three Subs don't equal One Genuine

When I was asked to take care of my mom's cats for a week while she was away, I was certainly happy to say 'yes' and prepared my two bedroom apartment for the two additional felines' arrival.  These are cats whom have been members of the family for over 14 years, so I felt that I would love to have them for this visit.  Seems after only this first day that my thoughts were mistaken...

A little summary of the first 10 hours went as follows: Maggie (whom I affectionately call 'Magit') spent 8 hours under my couch from the moment she arrived. The other, Bubba (whom I call 'Boobaloo') was in and out from under the couch for most of the day also and came out only to get a drink of water.  Boobaloo also felt the need to inspect the dining room table top, tried to inspect the kitchen counter top, and hissed under the door at my cat who I had to unfortunately confine to her own room for the duration of the week.  Magit came out eventually and tried to hop up on top of the bathroom counter, tried to trip me about 4 times when I was getting some watermelon from the fridge, and would not stop whopping her tail against my arm even when I was not touching her.  Both then executed a grand finale in the night of hissing at each other for 10 minutes followed by harassment to my hamster.

These less-than-amusing events left me with the realization that I have changed quite a bit on my view of owning pets.  When I was a bit younger, I felt that having animals was about the joy of the love and attention you could shower on them and the love and affection they show to you. I could deal with the cleaning up, the feeding, the vet bills, the hair, the meowing etc, because they were giving me love and giving me purpose.  Now however, I have a more mature understanding of my what my own priorities are, what I should spend my time doing to benefit my life, humans to have around whom I can direct love towards and feel loved by, and that I truly like to keep a REALLY clean house.

Cats thus (at least in multiple) have lost their spots as sources of fulfillment and have now passed onto the 'extra work' category.  I am certain that I would not choose to have more than one cat as a permanent pet while I still have my sanity and I give full permission to my friends and family to commit me to some institution for the mentally injured if I decide to have more than one.  Caring for pets is a great thing to do, don't get me wrong, but I think people who have buried themselves in multiple pets are actually just using the pets as a cover-up to their loneliness and filling the void of a lack of companionship from another human being.

Note to those whom are thinking of having multiple pets...If you stack them on top of each other to the height of an average human being, they still don't become a human being to help you to feel fulfilled.  Only a true human can help you with that.