My family home not only had a porch with trees and grass, but also a large backyard where we could play freely and which could easily have been the perfect place for pets. But for some strange reason, my parents never allowed dogs or cats.
To be honest, it was never a problem for me, since I was afraid of cats from a very young age, and as for dogs, when I was five, the neighbor's dog bit my arm and I had to get a rabies shot. However, even though there weren't any of those kinds of pets at home, there were always parakeets or parrots, which they brought from the countryside, and my paternal grandmother was usually the one who took care of them.
The parakeets or parrots weren't in cages, so my grandmother had to clip their wings to keep them from escaping. She taught them to talk, and it was lovely to come home from school and hear the parrots calling to us, begging for food: "Nancy, give me food," Pancho and Juancho would say, following us around so we'd give them bread or fruit.
We also had a small sea turtle at home, which was brought to us in December, so we named it Navidad (Christmas). The turtle was so small it could fit in the palm of our hand, and although we were in charge of feeding it and cleaning the small pool where it lived, my parents adored it so much that they also took care of it. Sadly, Navidad died of a heart attack after an earthquake, leaving the whole family devastated.
All these little animals belonged to everyone; they didn't belong to anyone in particular within the family. But the only time I had a pet was because I received one as a gift for my 15th birthday. A classmate, with whom I got along very well, gave me a gray rabbit, which I named Candy.
Candy was a beautiful baby rabbit who slept in a box in my room, and I took her for walks in the garden every day. I remember buying her several colorful ribbons to match my clothes, and I had a little tag made with her name on it, which she always wore around her neck. She was easy to care for, love, and feed: I put a container of food and a container of water in the box, and that was it. I remember sometimes bringing her into my bed, and she would sleep with me, and my mother would scold me for taking such good care of her. But once, I took her out into the garden, and she ate a plant that poisoned her. I suffered so much that from then on, I didn't want to get attached to another animal.
As a curious fact, strangely enough, animals die in my house. It's not due to lack of care or food; on the contrary, I feel we sometimes overfeed them. Some say they absorb negative energy and that, like plants, they can even die from the evil eye. I don't know anything about that, but I do believe that this might explain why my parents didn't let us have pets: they spared us the pain of losing them. 🐾
