Animals in Your Living Space

Animals are cute – that is a given. It is fun to receive their love and attention, show them off to friends, and try to make them happy. Some situations, however, are better suited for the plush kind than for the real, live, eating, breathing, sleeping, pooping kind. Let us face it – the only “pet” suitable for a hostel or a paying-guest arrangement is a fuzzy toy teddy bear. Or maybe one of those weird Japanese robot pets if you can afford one!

Some hostels, while they reasonably will not allow cats and dogs, fail to make a fuss about animal companions who are forced to live in an aquarium or a cage. This is bad news for small animals who are sold in pet stores and markets, like fish, tortoises and turtles. (By the way, it is illegal to confine and keep wild animals indigenous to India anyway.) And with your busy academic schedule and jam-packed social calendar, it is next to impossible to feed yourself adequately, let alone find the time (and money – let us not forget about that) to care for an animal. Your hostel or paying-guest room is no place for an animal to live. And neither is a glass tank or a cage. You hate being confined – so do animals.

Every year without fail, animals are left without a home when college students scatter for vacations or after graduation. These animals are also in a dangerous situation if they need veterinary care. How many college students are willing and able to pay vet bills at the drop of a hat? College students’ lives are unstable and unpredictable, and that is usually part of the fun, but there is no reason to drag animals into the drama.

If your real interest is in helping animals, keeping one cooped up in an alternately lonely and then loud and confusing room while you are one moment out enjoying campus life or studying to pass your exams and the next having friends over is not the way to go. If you cannot get by without some nonhuman companionship, then you have yet another reason to show affection to homeless animals by visiting the nearby animal shelter, where cats and dogs are usually afraid, lonely and need all the love they can get. You can also volunteer with a wildlife rehabilitation centre if there is one in the area.