All My Children

At first, my wife refused point-blank, but the children were so persistent, she finally agreed on a compromise. “OK,” she said, “I’m not promising anything, but we’ll just pop into the local pet shop and have a look.”

Silly girl.

When I got home that evening I was greeted by two ecstatic daughters, a hamster called Hamlet, a blue and white budgie called Timmy — and a look from my wife that warned me to keep quiet and say nothing.

As a result, I confined myself to one simple observation to both daughters: “I wonder how long these ones will last”.

As it happens, I didn’t have to wait very long to find out.

As I write this, Hamlet the hamster is alive and well and trundling merrily upon his treadmill — an activity he has performed about 23 hours a day ever since we got the little beast. If there had been a treadmill trundling marathon event at the most recent Olympic Games, our Hamlet would indubitably have come home with a gold medal.

Sadly, I cannot report a similar happy fate for Timmy the budgie. This is because, less than 24 hours after he became a part of our family, poor Timmy also became lunch for one of our family cats.

To cut short a long, sad and grisly tale, Kendall had let the bird out of its cage so she could play with it. The bird, unaware of the dangers posed by the feline members of our domestic menagerie, had promptly used the opportunity to effect its escape.

And so, in front of Kendall’s horrified gaze, it had flown across the kitchen and — quite literally — straight into the outstretched paws of Mitzi the Persian assassin.

As my wife attempted to calm our distraught daughter, she realised there was only one option open to her. Another bird. And so back to the pet shop they went.

In an effort to hide the horrid affair from me, my wife bought another blue and white budgie. She also insisted to Kendall that it have the same name — “So Daddy won’t know the difference”.

Sadly, this subterfuge was to fail dismally.

The very next day, exactly the same fate befell Timmy Number Two. This time, Kendall was at school and two-year-old Kimberly had opened the cage and let out the bird, which responded to this grand gesture by flying straight into the claws of the waiting cat, who by now had taken up station close to the cage in anticipation of its daily diet of free-range budgerigar.

This time, my wife didn’t hang around. As soon as she discovered what had happened, she sped to the pet shop yet again and asked the thoroughly bemused shop owner for a third blue and white budgie. Her plan was to buy the bird, get it home and secure in its cage before Kendall got back from school and discovered what had happened.

No such luck.

“Sorry,” said the shop owner — who by now probably thought my wife was murdering the birds herself. “There are no more blue and white budgies left.”

Which is why we now have a brand-new, bright yellow budgie chirping merrily in the cage so recently vacated by the late Timmy Number One and the even later Timmy Number Two.

All things considered, Kendall took the news pretty well. And now she keeps the cage in her bedroom and never lets the budgie out unless all the doors and windows are locked and the cats are nowhere in sight.

In an effort not to tempt Fate any further, Kendall has decided to call her new budgie by the name of Gloria.

Only one small snag. Gloria is a boy.

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