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I'm not fat, I'm fluffy

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, June 30, 2008

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I’m sure you, like I, have heard of the many studies indicating that pets can improve our emotional health. Pets are used in therapy for autistic or otherwise disabled children; they’re taken to nursing homes to improve the quality of residents’ lives and raise their spirits.

These experiments work, I’ve decided, because the people whose lives are being enriched don’t have to clean up after their pets, or take them to the veterinarian, or sleep with their toenails pressed firmly into the small of their back.

Nobody’s life was ever enriched when the dog found the old bread they put out in the yard for the birds, ate every speck of it, and then came into the house to yak it all up. Nobody’s spirits were lifted because an enterprising cat found their shoe and thought it looked a lot like a small, clean, unused cat box.

I have my doubts about pets and mental health, and have to consider the possibility that if you have as many pets as we do, you probably didn’t have that much mental health going for you to begin with.

So this week I thought I’d take up the matter of pets and physical health. I know our pets contribute greatly to the amount of exercise I get every day.

First there’s the Dog Hurdle: Katy Big Dog got some shepherding instincts from somewhere, and is compelled by these urges to lay in doorways, where she can see as many family members as possible at any given time. She keeps watch over us most days with her eyes firmly shut, but never mind that—the important thing is, she almost always wakes up a little just as you step over her. That’s when she raises her head, just in time to catch your foot and send you staggering and careening into the next room, if you manage to stay upright at all. After this exercise, Katy’s usually tired and has to sleep again.

Gladys Little Dog evidently inherited some of her herding instincts from a neurotic marmoset: When she senses I’m changing locations, she leaps up and hurries to get in front of me, where she tries to guess where I’m going by running a few steps and stopping to look back at me. Probably to see if I’ve fallen yet.

The Dog Hurdle exercise is interspersed throughout my day with picking up the 19,000 things the cats knock down, pull off, drag out, and drag in. Then there’s the new kitten, who spends a good part of every day leaping out from behind or under things to hug my calf for several steps. Add all that to the fact that we have 10 free-ranging pets, and the doors have to be opened at least 10 times a day for each of them, and you’ve got yourself a pretty good workout.

I do have a daily exercise routine, aside from being enriched by the dogs and cats. I take a blissfully animal-free walk every morning, and do about 20 minutes of stretches, weights and floor exercises. Pets do not improve this routine at all, although I suppose you could argue that they keep it from getting dull.

I start off with some standing stretches, and lifting some light weights. This is Katy’s cue to go get a massive drink of water, as the other animals in the house begin to gather around me, waiting eagerly for the moment I lay in the floor and attempt to do crunches and leg-lifts.

The minute I hit the floor, Katy appears, her exceedingly large jowls streaming. Feigning concern, she plants her feet on my hair and stands directly over my face, dripping onto me and looking perplexed. “Ten, go ‘way,” I grunt between crunches. “Eleven, stop it. Twelve, dammit, Katy.”

Gladys, on hearing me speak Katy’s name, races over to make sure Katy isn’t getting extra attention. A hardcore licker, she is compelled to clean the mess Katy dripped onto me, and treats me to a big dose of her meaty fresh breath. Still I persevere: “Twenty, go lay down. Twenty-one, get away from me.”

Squeaker cat waits until the dogs get bored and leave me to come over and enforce the petting rules by pushing his head firmly and repeatedly into my face. Then Spider steps in. Spider is a cat of high spirits; he thinks everything is funny, including the noise I make when he leaps from my computer desk onto my diaphragm, knocking what little wind I have left right out of me.

Lovey cat waits for me to begin my leg-lifts, at which point he darts under my leg so that I can’t put it down again. Throughout the whole ordeal, the kitten—who, by the way, I named Blue Sky but who we all call “Blooskee”—has to be removed over and over from various parts of my body.

Honestly, it’s no wonder I stay fat. Maybe the answer is that the animals like me just as I am.

I’m not fat, I’m fluffy.

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