I have a long history of pet-related fear and resultant emotional withdrawal: when my second hamster died, I adopted a pose of "it's not worth it" as a kind of heart-armour, like, taking for granted the postulate that the degree of joy derived from the life of a beloved pet is always infinitesimally less than the pain felt at its death without asking any love-mathematician to prove it. My dad was a sickly kid with a cat who died badly, as I understand it (he didn't tell us this but I read about it in one of his stories), so maybe I got it from him through some obscure osmosis. When my sister brought home kittens I was opposed, even though she was 19, and it was only really fucking up my human relationships later on and then having a son and feeling that toughening up was required that made me get over it. (He can have a puppy when he's older; or at least, he can ask his mother.) So the sad kid coloured blue who stays physically blue even when his cat inevitably comes back and he's a happy kid again inevitably makes me uncomfortable, because he's just gonna hurt you again, kid. He's just gonna die. In between this is fine, though the nervous part of me aroused by the conditions about craved a more systematic (less haphazard) exploration of the various qualities possessed by the various non-cat items the kid's friends bring around, like, maybe from most catlike to most ludicrous? Not just a hodgepodge? ( )