Adopting happiness

Mac eye­ing Jake

If you treat them well, your adopted pets will usu­ally give you back 1000% in smiles and uncon­di­tional love. I think that’s what most pet own­ers know.

“Mac was very happy this morn­ing”, I said one morn­ing to Naomi after I had taken the dog out for a short while.

“Dogs are usu­ally happy no mat­ter what, unless they’ve been abused or some­thing”, she said.

Being a fairly new dog-adopter, I’ve been priv­i­leged to expe­ri­ence the non­sen­si­cal hap­pi­ness Mac pro­vides daily. He picks up a toy and enter­tains him­self for a long time, even when we’re both hun­kered down with work. Hav­ing a play­ful house­mate in Jake the Cat pro­vides Mac with even more enter­tain­ment as he stalks, chases and bites (gen­tly) Jake all around the apartment.

Not that the har­rass­ment is all one-sided. Once I was amazed to wit­ness Mac chase Jake, then Jake do a U-turn and chase Mac back until he caught up with him and then leap over the stunned dog.

Mac even had a cou­ple of bat­tle scars from the rowdy encoun­ters, but they’re all healed now. Some­times they get too bois­ter­ous, and we have to sep­a­rate them for a few hours to get some peace.

Cats on the other hand, are a dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish alto­gether. They’re a lit­tle more unpre­dictable, although with Jake, we know how much he craves com­pany and atten­tion, but on his own terms. He’ll meow his head off until we open our bed­room door in the morn­ing just so he can see us for a minute, then he skulks off to another part of the house.

He also takes to pro­vok­ing Mac into chas­ing him most days. Run­ning at full flight at the dog and then away, so that he’ll get chased.

I don’t know how to explain see­ing and envy­ing a dog’s and a cat’s sim­ple life of play, eat and sleep adds to our hap­pi­ness quo­tient. It just does.

And if you do want a lit­tle slice of hap­pi­ness this way, please, do like we did. Adopt, don’t buy. There are plenty of ani­mals who need a lov­ing home, and who’ll bestow upon that home 1000% returns in investment.

Visit the SPCA, and this blog writ­ten by an SPCA vol­un­teer, and see for yourself.