If you are or have ever been a “pet-parent” you know how much love and affection goes into taking care of our furry little friends. We tend to treat them like our children and bend over backward for their each and every whim (even when they’re just being divas). I have two Persian cats and a Cocker Spaniel and they are honestly the three lights of my life.
We got the cats first and naming them was pretty…interesting.
One of the cats is orange because I wanted to name him Crookshanks after Hermione Granger’s cat from the Harry Potter series so that was a no-brainer. The second cat is pitch black and we almost went for the obvious name “Kaaloo,” but the name honestly just felt kind of weird and rude to say so for a couple of days we didn’t call him anything.
That was until someone made a comment “Yeh toh malang ho kar sota hai!”
From then on, he was coined as Malinga. So every time we introduce our cats, people always assume that we named Malinga after the cricketer but that was definitely not the case! Side note: my mom is so in love with him she calls him her Snow White… yeah, we’re a weird household!
Crookshanks and Malinga set the ground rules for how they want everything and well, their wish is my command!
So both the cats sleep in my room and the door of the bathroom MUST be kept open at ALL TIMES just in case our sahibzaadas want to take a midnight stroll or a nap in the sink! They will wake up EVERY morning at precisely 6 am and start meowing at the top of their lungs to get me to open the door. As soon as I am back in bed, they’ll come back and meow again for me to open the door so they can come back inside – moral of the story: the door of my room must be kept open AT ALL TIMES!
You will never be able to find a pair of socks in my house because these two love to take ONE sock from the laundry basket and hide it in an unknown corner of the house because hey life’s too short to be wearing matching socks! It’s pretty clear that my cats have established dominance over my household.
A year after we got the cats, my Dad brought home a dog and well the cats certainly weren’t happy about that!
Our dog Pongo is the sweetest, most loving and most hyperactive dog you will ever meet! He loved the cats as soon as he met them and wanted to play but they were just not having it. Crookshanks just avoided him for some time but Malinga would call him out and when Pongo would come close, Malinga would ninja slap the shit out of him! But Pongo, being the lovely thing that he is still loves trying to hang out with Malinga.
Pongo is probably the most spoilt dog in Lahore, if not in Pakistan!
He wears a doggy diaper because he lives inside the house and none of us had the time to potty train him. He went through a phase where he was a picky eater so my mom would sit on the floor and feed him with her hands. It took me months to get him out of that habit! He takes all the toys we get for the cats and has even hijacked their blanket and made it into his own security blanket. I’m serious, no one is allowed to touch it.
But he’s a little goofy too.
Pongo sleeps with his eyes open, only understands Urdu and doesn’t bark (except for when his special dog video is played on YouTube). Since he grew up with cats, he thinks he is one and constantly tries to lick himself clean only to make himself even dirtier than he was, to begin with. He is the ULTIMATE darpok – from rickshaws to motorcycles to Malinga, Pongo is scared of pretty much everything!
All things aside, I love these three little creatures more than I’ve loved anything in my entire life.
Being a pet parent is something I am always going to cherish – their little antics and the unconditional love is something I can’t get from anywhere else! Do you have any pets? Are they the royals of your household like mine are? Comment below and let us know!
