We were allowed pets when we were children, but not a cat or a dog. I think mum must have thought that they would be too ‘messy’. So my first pet was Snowy, a white mouse, which died rather suddenly much to my distress. But it had a good burial in the back garden, my dad even going so far as to make a little cross for it out of lollypop sticks on which he wrote the name ‘Snowy’. I remember it well.
Then we had lots of those goldfish that you brought home from fairgrounds in a plastic bag and hoped they would survive the shock of being emptied out into a goldfish bowl. Surprisingly some of them did live for a while, swimming through the little arch that was in the bottom of the bowl, managing to grab some sustenance from that food we sprinkled on the top of the water.
I think on one occasion we were allowed to look after the classroom hamster during a school holiday but that was a rather stressful period. My mum didn’t want to have to go through the trauma of it dying on our watch and having to explain to the teacher what had happened with a distressed class of children looking on and hating us.
We did better with a bird, Beauty, a cockatiel. He was my sister’s pet though as I remember it was mum who had to clean the cage out. In fact the bird hated my mum because, I think, she was always screaming at my brother to stop fiddling with the cage. In fact Beauty had strong opinions about people and lived a long time as members of the parrot family tend to do. When my sister hitched herself to her boyfriend the bird became very jealous and decided to hate the guy who would become my brother-in-law as much as he hated my mum. When my sister was married and left home her husband refused to allow the bird to come as well. So mum ended up having to look after it – even though it would attach its beak to her finger whenever she went near it – and she and my father took on the responsibility until the morning they came down and found poor Beauty dead on the floor of the cage.
There were no more pets in our life.
So getting to know Doorkins and Hodge at the Cathedral has been a somewhat unusual experience for me, and to be drawn into the real world of pets – the world of cats and dogs – as opposed to mice, goldfish and cockatiels has been fascinating and not without its joys. I have also learnt, especially around the death of Doorkins and the subsequent debate about whether we were right or not, deluded or devoted, to hold a memorial service for our feline friend, that the world of pets is a place where angels fear to tread.
So I was amazed when it was reported last week that Pope Francis made the comments he did about pets and babies and about what he described as the selfishness of those for whom their pet is a surrogate baby. Surely his erstwhile canonised namesake, the animal lover par excellence, St Francis of Assisi should have warmed him in a vision not to go near the subject! The only consolation is that on this occasion the Pope was not speaking infallibly!
On the face of it the story seems trivial but the underlying issue is a serious one. The reasons given for marriage in the Prayer Book are clear. In the Preface to the Solemnization of Marriage it gives this as the first reason that marriage was given by God to humanity
First, it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.
In subsequent revisions the order has been changed. But it is still there, marriage is about having babies, and, as we were taught at college, a couple entering into a marriage intending it to be childless would be making the sacrament deficient. But I don’t think that this is at all the world we live in now. Many couples want children, some don’t, some can’t. But what most couples, whatever the relationship looks like, whoever it is made up of, will have a lot of love and that needs to be expressed beyond themselves. I have very close friends for whom nieces, nephews and godchildren are their children, for whom pets are a source of love and support. These people, in my experience, are anything but selfish. It is just too easy to think, when you see a little dog’s head emerging from a designer handbag as you make your way along Bond Street that this is a surrogate baby and the person whose handbag and pet is in is inherently selfish.
The thing I have learnt observing how people relate to Doorkins and Hodge is that the cats bring out the best in their admirers. There is such love, such affection, such comfort that I can’t begin to dismiss it or diminish it.
Jesus stands in the middle of the flowers of the field on a hillside in Galilee and asks his disciples to ‘Look at the birds’, ‘Consider the lilies’ (Matthew 6) to understand ourselves in relation to all that God has created, to find our place and our values and our priorities in relation to the whole of creation. That has to include the pets who so generously share their love and their lives with us – and that even includes Beauty!
God of love, may I value love wherever I truly find it. Amen.
LIVING GOD 
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