The death of a pet

I started my new job at Accenture yesterday. As much as it has been an interesting past couple of days working in a completely new environment, unfortunately my story of my experiences so far are about to be put on hold until my next post, due to a recent sad event. One of my gerbils died on Saturday. The poor blighter was one of my brown male gerbils, named Peanut. He was the biggest and fattest among my gerbil family of eight (would have been ten, but I gave two away to an ex-colleague).

Now it would not have been so bad if the little fella had died of old age, or got sick, or just died of high cholesterol coz' it was too fat. I would have been sad, but I would've gotten over it quickly. But instead, not only am I sad, but I am also infuriated, pissed and downright ready to explode everytime I think about what happened to my gerbil. Because Peanut was a perfectly happy and healthy gerbil, and it would've lived up to a ripe old age.... if NOT for someone in my house who decided he was so smart and didn't listen to what I asked him to do so many time. This said person in my house completely disregarded what I told him NOT to do, even though it was related to MY pets, which HE never lifted a finger to feed, or give water to, or change their bedding or take care of them in any way. This said person in my house caused the death of my poor innocent gerbil for his own sadistic amusement!!!!

How did it happen? Well, let's see... this person in my house, or PIMH for short, because I do not want to refer to him in any other manner out of my little spattering of respect I think I have left of him simply because I am 'supposed' to respect him, had decided from the time I had begun taking care of my gerbils that it would be amusing to let the family dog a.k.a. Sassy the Shih Tzu 'play' with the gerbils by letting her loose on a few of the gerbils at once in a confined area. By confined, it usually meant on the top of a bed or a couch. The PIMH seemed to think it would good to do so because it would get the dog of the house all excited and give her some exercise chasing the gerbils around. But I myself having observed the dog when it chased the gerbils, saw that the dog would sometimes get too rough and try to grab them with a mouth (equivalent to a fatal bite for a little gerbil) or immobilize them by pouncing on them with her paw. As such, I informed this PIMH not to let the dog play with the gerbils, not once, but on several occasions, reminding him that the dog could hurt the gerbils, even though she may only be 'playing' with them and not want to hurt them intentionally. However, this said PIMH thought our dog to be so preciously innocent that it wouldn't hurt the gerbils at all, even though I once saw the dog catch one of my gerbils in her mouth and grip it tightly enough that it took both me and my mum to extricate it gently. Fortunately, my dog was smart enough that time to not bite hard enough to injure the gerbil, so it came out unscathed. But it still demonstrated that the dog would not hesitate to take a bite at them if she had the chance. But this said PIMH insisted that all she was doing was 'nudging the gerbils with her mouth'. Right.

So last weekend, I went to Malacca to visit my boyfriend for a few days from Friday to Sunday. And I had a great holiday, blissfully unaware of any unfortunate events happening back home... until I arrived home on Sunday. Then, after a little nap to recuperate from the journey home, I was informed my this said PIMH that something not-so-good had happened over the weekend. Now if he had just told me straight out what had happened instead of beating around the bush with a sheepish look on his face, maybe I wouldn't be so mad in hindsight. But that wasn't the case, coz' after a few more 'hints' about whatever it was that happened, it dawned on me. I asked him if anything had happened to my gerbils. Again, the sheepish look on the PIMH's face. And he asked me "Would you be mad of something bad had happened to your gerbils?". Confirming what I suspected, I answered a definite YES, and after some more questioning of this PIMH who annoyingly continued to beat around the bush, I discovered that he had let the dog 'play' with the gerbils and 'apparently' during this 'playtime', one of my gerbils 'died of a heart attack'.

At first, I didn't believe him. I couldn't believe him. I thought he was joking. But he said he wasn't. And when I went to count my gerbil family, I found 7 instead of 8. Peanut was missing. And when I asked him which gerbil was dead, he said the one that was brown in colour from the cage of males.

After I realised what had happened, I couldn't help myself. I cried for the next half an hour, completely speechless. I sat in front of my gerbil cages, cleaning out the stuff that they had chewed up over the weekend and replaced it with new things for them to chew. Then I went to eat my lunch, still crying silently. And all this time, this said PIMH didn't say anything. He didn't apologize, nothing. He just sat in front of his computer, staring at the screen as if nothing had happened. For more than half an hour. Then after a while, I got so mad, I asked him if he even felt sorry at all. Then, and ONLY then, did he say "Yeah, I'm sorry". And that was it. Just a sorry. Nothing along the lines of "I did something wrong and stupid and I shouldn't have" or anything else to indicate he regretted was he did. The only time he apologized was when I asked him to!!!!

And if that wasn't enough to make me cry, curse, swear under my breath and throw occasional angry fits at the idiocy of this PIMH allowing the dog to chase the gerbil around when I had told him repeatedly NOT to do so, today after even more prodding, I found out even MORE details of that horrible day that makes my blood boil even more. For one thing, the dog and the gerbils, were't just on the bed, they were on my floor of my bedroom. I've seen them on the bed before, and on that small space, the dog isn't usually chasing the gerbils so frantically as there is little space to chase them. But on the FLOOR, there is PLENTY of space for her to chase them, and there is where I have seem her pounce on them and try to bite them. I would have NEVER left her alone with them on the floor for a SECOND coz' I know she would do something to them. But this PIMH of amazingly low IQ told me that he NOT only left them alone, he left the dog with Peanut in the room alone for TEN minutes!!!!!! TEN MINUTES!!!!!! For crying out loud! The dog could have done anything to the gerbil in just 30 second, let alone ten minutes!!!!And what was he doing in that ten minutes? Well, he said he had been letting her play with a few of them at once, and he left the dog in the room with Peanut while he said he was putting the other gerbils back in their cage. WHAT??!!! It doesn't take ten minutes to walk from my room to the cage! What on earth was he thinking by leaving them alone for TEN minutes!!!!!!

After that, I realised not only was this said PIMH was sooooo stoooopid to leave the dog alone with my gerbil, so but he was also bullshitting me with pathetic excuses to try and cover up what had happened. For one thing, he told me that the gerbil 'died of a heart attack'. For goodness sake, there's not way it would've died of a heart attack! The dog wouldn't either bitten it or jumped on it so hard that it cracked it's skull or broke it's body. Either way, the dog did something to that killed it. And his lame excuse is that it died of a heart attack! And secondly, he told me that 'the dog was very quiet and sad' after that. Yeah right. The dog wouldn't have known it did anything wrong any better than a young lion cub who had killed its first rabbit. And I'm sure that this PIMH didn't even do anything to punish the dog or let it know what it did was wrong coz' he pampers the dumb pooch so much (though I also might add that it's my MUM who feeds it, bathes it, blowdries it, grooms it and does practically everything else for the dog while all this PIMH does is cuddle it call it his "LOVE"). And these excuses just infuriate me to bits! It's already bad enough he let this happen when I kept telling him not to do it! And he had the nerve to try and make it sound nicer than it was??? And the even MORE infuriating part is that when I scold him for it, he gets annoyed and just tells me that it's over now and I shouldn't be bringing it up so much. WHAT??? I raised this little gerbil everyday from the day it was born to become a perfectly healthy little fella... I bought the gerbils nice cages to stay in with wheels for them to exercise on and little funnels for them to play in.... I spend hours separating their poop and chewed up stuff from their bedding so I could make their cage cleaner (and not have to buy so much bedding)... I sat down next to their cages almost every night to feed them their favourite kuaci... I know each and every one of my gerbils by name.... and this insensitive PIMH who never lifted a finger to take care of them, doesn't even know their names, goes and does exactly what I told him NOT to do, gets one of my gerbils killed because of it, and when I scold him for it, he dares to get annoyed with me???? CAN YOU BLAME ME BEING SO ANGRY I WANT TO SCREAM MY HEAD OFF??? AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Now everytime I clean out the cages or feed them kuaci, I keep thinking how there should be one more fat healthy brown gerbil running around in one of the cages, together with it's brothers and father. And I keep thinking how it's broken little body is rotting in some rubbish dump somewhere coz' that's where that PIMH unceremoniously dumped it before I even had the chance to see it. And he is still happily sitting in front of his computer everyday like life is just dandy. And he expects me to get over it. Right. I know most males are not as sensitive to other people's plights as females are.... but this PIMH... he has less sensitivity than that of a rotten prune. He's not truly sorry... and he never admitted he was wrong. To him, it's just one silly rat that died, and he probably thinks I'm overreacting. Which may be right, maybe I am overreacting. But it's the principle of the thing! Even though Peanut was just a little gerbil who cared more about getting it's daily kuaci than loving me back, I still loved it and it was MY pet. And if he doesn't have the decency to listen to me when I tell him NOT to endanger them, nor even apologize or admit he was wrong when something like this happens.... then I'm sure it will be a long time before I can ever get over this unfortunate incident. For now, all I can do is hope time will help me regain my severely depleted respect for this PIMH while also helping me to get through the tragic and unnecessary loss of an innocent pet.