My kids love animals. All animals.

Eight legs, four legs, flippers, scales, flying, jumping, buzzing and crawling they simply love them all. They get this from their mother.

I like animals too. I just don’t love them. Not like they do. I wrestle with what the animals can do to the kids. I’m not referring to bites and scratches but to broken hearts.

In the three years we have been in our current home we have lost one dog (old age), one cat (run in with a car) and one neighbor dog (it can be a busy road). The old dog was girl number two’s introduction to death and subsequently heaven. She wasn’t too rattled by the old guys passing but she did miss seeing him around. At this time the girl was on the eve of turning two.

A mere seven months later we lost the cat. This wasn’t just any cat, it was the girls cat and she loved her. This one was tough. We went through weeks of questions and assertions. And there were tears, yes, lots of tears. I had clearly misunderstood how much she loved this cat.

While I occasionally struggle with the relationship the kids have with their animals I can’t imagine our home without one, or three.

To be honest, it doesn’t really matter what I would like to imagine since my wife is very clearly one of them.