If you want to get a pet, you better understand what that means, you hear me? If you get a pet that free roams around your house and they pee all over the place and bite you, that is not grounds for putting it down. That pet, is the descendant of wolves or wild cats, and you’re expecting them to behave nicely for you. Yes, you can train pets, and you can have bonds with them, but it is not a requirement from the animal that they behave in a way that is appropriate to humans to live. The cat isn’t being a bad cat, it is being a cat!!! These are things that you have to consider before getting a pet! Are you willing to deal with this kind of stuff? If not, do not get the pet or consider getting a pet with needs that are more manageable. And no, that does not mean get a small pet because they’re easier. They’re not, however that won’t tear up your furniture or pee on them. However, there will be significant space in your house dedicated to their cage which will be the appropriate size and not the tiny ones that they sell at the pet store. You will clean their cage regularly, and provide them with all of the enrichment, food, and hiding places that they need, and you will understand that you have to earn their trust in order for them to interact with you, and even then, different individual creatures have different personalities and limits and they might never be okay with certain things, and you have to respect that because it is not their job as an animal to please you. They did not ask to be here. You chose to adopt them, so you better treat them right. Fish aren’t an easy way out either, yes I assume you probably won’t be trying to poke at them I hope, but as pretty as they are, in order to keep them alive and healthy, you will do research and put them in an appropriately sized tank and not a tiny little bowl, and you will clean said tank, and give them the enriching plants that they need, and if real plants won’t work for you, then you’ll find safe fake plants that won’t cut their fins, and you will research the nitrogen cycle and you will take a month doing it in your tank before introducing a fish to it because otherwise it will die in its own feces, and not enough people know that you have to put ammonia in the tank pre fish and monitor the ammonia, nitrate and nitrite levels until the bacteria is stable and is converting the ammonia into nitrates and then into nitrites so that your fish can be safe, otherwise there is a good chance that it will die because goldfish can live for 15 years but many people don’t know this because it is normalized to kill them. Animal death is not funny and it will never be funny. The pet industry is already a mess, don’t make it worse. You should never ever put a pet down unless they are actively in pain and dying and it would be merciful to let them rest.
