Excerpt: The Pet Sitter

I am a pet sitter. I consider it not merely a vocation, but a calling. Ever since man began to live side by side with animals, someone has been needed to feed them, herd them, and tend to their enclosures, their wounds, their burial. When we enslaved animals, they became dependent on us. We have a responsibility, a sacred trust, for our animals.

I live just outside the city of Washington, D.C., where hundreds of companies provide services for pet owners: groomers, dog walkers, trainers, pet bakeries, pet psychics, emergency animal hospitals, even animal crematories and cemeteries.

When people ask how I make my living, even if they don’t own a pet, they have a general awareness of the profession. I can count on clichéd responses. What, like, you walk dogs? You pick up poop, too? This response is usually accompanied by a raised eyebrow, laugh, or both. And sometimes all that is said is, Oh, followed by a confused look, as if people are thinking, What kind of work is that for an able-bodied grown man? I can tell they assume that I am stupid and I am un-ambitious. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

While most people think of their pets as an adjunct part of their life, I consider animals to be our betters. An animal cannot lie. It can sense immediately who has its good in mind and who does not, and it will growl or hiss at kith and kings alike. An animal will fight to the death to save your life. And an animal will never judge you. Watch a dog that visits a hospital or old age home. The young, old, bald, incontinent, dying: the dog greets everyone the same. Everyone is equal in the eyes of that animal. Show me a man who can do that.