Goodbye, sweet Kiwi.

Throughout my youth, I figured I knew all I needed to about pets, but my first year of marriage taught me I was sorely mistaken.

I grew up in a pet-free home. I also had very few friends who had pets. After my oldest sister married, she had a cat she called CC, for Crazy Cat; it was a mean cat, and I was highly allergic to it too. My next door neighbors, whom I didn't socialize with much, had pets. The neighbors on one side had an annoyingly yappy little Yorkshire Terrier, and the neighbors on the other side had two yappy dogs and a cat, which preferred my mom's flower bed to its own litter box. 

Conversely, my wife grew up with pets in her home. She had a parakeet, "Puffin," and a cat, "Sadie," who were both her best friends. Sadie, an outside cat, would walk my (many-years-later-to-be) wife, Sharisse, home from elementary school for the last couple blocks, and Sharisse would get squawked at by Puffin until Sharisse opened the bird's cage door so she could hang out on Sharisse's shoulder for the rest of the day. She loved those animals and was heartbroken when they died. 

I never knew either of those pets, but I've heard stories about them from Sharisse and her family.

About the time Sharisse and I got engaged, she got a new feathered friend; a parakeet whose colors reminded us of a blue sky spotted with white clouds.  We later named the bird Cyrus, a name similar to Cirrus clouds. That bird moved into our first apartment with us.

Within our first year of marriage, in that first apartment, we were eager to get to know new people; especially our close neighbors. We had invited our downstairs neighbors up for Sunday dinner one week, to which they obliged. Before that evening was over, Cyrus, the parakeet, began flapping its wings rapidly, spraying blood on the adjacent wall. Obviously this wasn't normal, so we immediately examined the bird. It was bleeding from a wing. We quickly consulted the yellow pages in the phone book to find a veterinarian practice open late on a Sunday night. After several calls, we found one. However, it was about 40 minutes away, the examination fee would be $80, and we still had guests over. Of those three, though, my biggest concern was the cost.

The $80 fee would only cover the exam, and there would likely be additional expenses, not to mention the cost of driving that far. At that time, as is the case for innumerable newlyweds, we were both working full-time-plus and still living paycheck to paycheck. Covering the medical expenses for the bird would be difficult at best. 

With this in mind, I came up with a solution that I thought was both very intelligent and fiscally responsible, without having to give up having a pet in our home. I told my wife, "The bird only cost $20 at the pet store. If this one doesn't make it for some reason, we can just get another one."

As my wife's lips immediately began to quiver, her eyes filled with tears, her face soured, and I knew I had just said the stupidest, most insensitive thing I possibly could have in that moment; in front of our guests, no less. I felt my face turn red with embarrassment, and I very quickly changed my tune to something more along the lines of, "Yes, dear; anything you want."

We made the journey, the vet stopped the bleeding and told us the bird would be fine, and we paid no more than just the exam fee.

Now, 10 years later, it's obvious my heart has opened up much more to household pets. We lost Kiwi, one of our younger parakeets, to a sudden illness yesterday. While Sharisse hasn't had much the same relationship with our birds as she did with her childhood parakeet, Puffin, she was nonetheless very broken up about Kiwi's death. I've been the birds' primary caretaker since we put them up on a shelf hanging in a corner of our living room, safely protected from our cat, who would like nothing more than to eat our little birds. Because the shelf is high up, it's easier for me to refill their food and water dishes than it is for Sharisse to do so. Sadly, though, the birds don't get a lot of attention because it seems they prefer it that way.

Anyway, I find my heart aching as much for my own loss from Kiwi's death, as it aches for Sharisse's loss; and we both feel terrible for the poor, sweet little bird, who helped to keep our home happy with her cute chirping and songs. I spent some time, today, making a box from pine board to serve as a coffin for Kiwi; something past birds didn't receive, as they were buried in cardboard boxes. I think making the box allowed me an opportunity to grieve and to feel like I was somehow making up for being absent in her last moments, in addition to potentially having terrorized the poor bird with the vacuum cleaner as I was cleaning up around her cage as she was sitting on the bottom, too sick to sit up top with the other bird, a safe distance from the vacuum hose. 

As we nailed the pine box closed and buried it in the ground, it became clear to me just how far I've come in caring about our household pets. I used to not care for animals at all, and I never really wanted to have any pets. We've mainly had pets for my wife's sake. However, even though I didn't have a lot of interaction with Kiwi, she was my bird, she lived in my home, she was dependent on me for her sustenance, and it's obvious I cared about her. Perhaps I even loved that little bird.