Tyler's First Pet

When Tyler was six, Anne and I gave him permission to adopt a dog. He had been asking for a dog for at least two years. When he visited his relatives in West Virginia, they all had dogs. When we visited the Sandanona Hounds in Millbrook, New York, there were dogs galore. He kept asking for a dog, and he finally wore us down.

We lived in an apartment on the Upper East Side, not far from the New York City animal shelter. On our first visit, the shelter staff required us to take the tour. They explained that an animal had to be adopted within thirty days from the time he or she arrived at the shelter. If not, the animal was put to sleep.

To be sure he understood, Tyler asked, "Does that mean you kill them?"

"Yes," answered our guide, "that's what it means."

And so we walked from cage to cage as the guide introduced each dog or cat. "This is Benny, and this is Greta, and this is Arthur, and this is Sox."

As we passed each cage, Tyler turned over each tag to see how long that animal had been in the shelter. Reading off the tags, he recited the number of days that animal had been at the shelter.

"Six days for Benny, fourteen days for Greta, eleven days for Arthur, twenty-one days for Sox," he called out.

And then we came to a cage containing a cat named Brooks. She was old, sleepy, and could not have shown less interest in us. She glanced briefly over her shoulder at us as we stood in front of her cage, and then turned away to resume her nap.

Tyler turned over her name tag and read out, "Twenty-nine days."

"We'll take her," he said. And that was how Brooks came to live with us. She never showed much more interest in us than she did at our first meeting. But I knew that Tyler had made the right choice, not only for Brooks but for himself.