Which was to make noise. A guard-dog, basically. I wanted a dog to bark at strangers or just generally act as an audio alert, an alarm system if you will, when people approach the house. His name was also designed to convey this – Brave Guardian. Or as the Mizo version of the BINGO song named the puppy: Venthiam Huaisena. Mavena for short.
Safe to say Mavena is not a guard dog. Not yet, at any rate.
I find it interesting though how true it is when people say pets tend to start acting like their humans. I thought about it and although I cannot say whatever I said of him in the first para are my traits too, I’ve noticed how very territorial he is. Just like me, he likes to take ownership of whatever he thinks is his – a ball, his dog chew toys, an old kitchen scrubber, pieces of old linen strings, old brushes, Ducky the plushy, etc. He just collects them in one place all the time. I find this oddly charming because this is me too.
I like to cherish what I own and I like what I like.
For this same reason, I thought about our other pets too. Simi is Feli’s cat and the pair of them just roam about everywhere at all the odd hours; you don’t even know when they come home. Snowy and Chia are Lee’s dog and cat and all of them can sleep at the drop of a hat. Nixi and Momo were my cats and both girls were fiercely independent and also high-strung. Lulua was Feli’s and he was extremely stubborn.
I also got to wondering how our pets would talk if they could. Based on their own little quirky personalities.
I believe Mavena would just jumble up his words and be very emotional and no one would really understand him. Nixi and Momo would have been eloquent speakers, and used hi-fi languages and speak in Old Mizo, probably. Lulua was a Punjabi boy; no one in Mizoram would have understood him. Simi would hardly talk, and if she did, probably spoke without bothering to enunciate, and probably her favourite word would be the Japanese “Mendokusai”. Chia probably talked like a Gen Alpha kid, all fancy Minglish, or Mizo with the elite accent. Snowy probably just talks a lot, with no beginning or ending, and turn a one-liner into two paragraphs. I don’t know. I’m assuming.
It’s just one of those things to do with pet ownership. There’s just a lot that ties us together, pet people. An extremely unifying factor. We just bond over pets. And you’ll realise a lot of us don’t even consider us Dog People and Cat People per se; we are Pet People. I’d pet a rhinoceros if I could. When the snake guy Roma held it steady for me, I pet a King Cobra as well. I just really like animals and want to be their friend.
Which is also why I don’t eat dog and cat meats, as a lot of other pet owners too. It is hypocritical but I can’t bring myself to eat an animal whose species I call pet. Duck meat, too. I had a pet duck once. My parents turned it into curry while I was in school. That was traumatizing. I’ve never eaten duck. I always say if ever I go to Beijing, I will try Peking Duck, but otherwise, I’m happy to not eat duck ever.
I forgot what I was talking about.
