Growing up, I always had pets: cats, dogs, even a turtle. I was always told that they are a big responsibility, that you can never get rid of them, you have to keep them until they pass away. They are an integral part of the family.

Maybe it is this strong sense of responsibility that scared me or maybe I was so busy with my young child, my two stepsons and my work, but when my first son was little we did not have a pet. When he was 5, he was desperate to have an animal and I realized that he needed to learn the sense of responsibility that comes with a four legged family member. We decided we would adopt a cat. We adopted our beautiful Pandora from the Humane society ( adopting a pet from a shelter saves two lives, the life of the one you adopt and the life of the animal that will replace him in the shelter.) The young kitten fell in love with my son and soon the two were inseparable. I always had pets and never had to learn how to behave with them, I thought that it would come naturally to Thomas... I was wrong, he thought that Pandora was a toy: shortly after she joined our family we had to rescue our new kitten from the freezer where Thomas had locked her in to punish her ( for eating his waffle,) it could have turned into a tragedy, but she did not stay long (thanks to my always hungry teenage stepson who opened the freezer for a snack) The cat did not even feel cold, she did not seem to mind too much neither when he trimmed her whiskers  a couple of days later...Hard to see when you are a cat lover! Thank God it stopped there, he seemed to have learned his lesson. My two other boys grew up with Pandora and then Melusine ( who adopted us against my will), we did not have to teach them to respect cats, Pandora took care of it, by then she was more mature and had more of a temper, she made sure they stayed away from her until they reached an  age when she felt she could trust them. Our mistake was that we waited too long for Thomas to live with a pet. They teach children that animals are to be respected and protected. I feel that this is a very important teaching nowadays, when humans treat animals like a commodity without a soul. They need to know that the world does not revolve only around human beings, that Nature and animals are an integral part of our world. Every child should be given the gift of caring for another precious life and all the teachings that come with it about love, responsibility, life and Nature.