Pre-Feline Anxiety

Ferret bandannas. I saw a site selling ferret bandannas yesterday and found myself too-long pondering the deep need we humans have to take a creature that is mostly neck and accessorize it.

I feel like ferret bandannas are only one step from snake ponchos and giraffe mufflers. Sure, it's a niche market. But it's also not like without one, your animal bud will feel insecure and unloved while reading her subscription of Ferretista Monthly.

But I didn't actually come to talk about ferret bandannas today. I came to talk about the reason I was even on a site with the odd and assorted ferret bandanna.

See, I'm planning to get my first non-finned pet.

And what I've learned about myself is this. It is just as well that I have no children. Because if I were planning this, I would be researching parenting skills so long, the battery on my biological clock would have completely corroded.

While I love both cats and dogs, I've opted for a cat due to time and maintenance issues. But with the amount of "For Dummies" books I've attained on the matter, and the amount of questions I've asked my cat-owning friends, you would think I was prepping to manage the Lion's Den at the Pittsburgh Zoo or something.

I'm not sure what it is that I'm so worried about. That if I don't train the cat properly, it'll start slipping out behind my back, with a gang of graffiti-spraying tomcats?

That she'll fail all her classes in Scratching, Shedding, and Turning Up Her Nose at Off-Brand Catfoods, and then never get into a good college?

That she'll grab the keys, steal the car, head to L.A. and try to make it big in Fancy Feast ads?

Hard to say. It's possible that I am drawing too much on the sad demise of the only pet I had growing up-- Copper, the psychologically-damaged carnival fish.

Copper had a rough life at the carnie, as part of a game where ping pong balls were thrown into his bowl. It was post-traumatic stress, I think. Weeks after he came home with me to a ping-pong-free environment, he still flinched every time someone would enter the room.

I'm still not convinced he didn't die of a coronary. He was very high strung. But it also might have been my fault. Too many fish flakes perhaps. I might have killed him with foody flakey love.

Now I do recognize I'm not likely to come home to find my cat doing the backstroke like Copper. But you never know. I don't have a lot of previous pet experience. An unsupervised catnip addiction, she goes like Heath Ledger. A slip of the wrong kibble and she could be doing a Mama Cass. I don't think I could handle the guilt. That's why I want to make sure I have all the info I need.

I will promise you this, though. I won't be blogging regularly about my cat. There are enough cat pictures on the internet to satiate a million happy hoarders.

And I won't be buying the cat a bandanna, either. See, I hear they already come complete with a fur coat.

And really, when you're wearing fur, too many accessories just make you look cheap.