When my older sister Mathilde was twelve, my mother told her she had to wait a year before getting a petâto make sure she was responsible enough, or maybe just hoping sheâd change her mind after a year. My sister, being an animal-loving preteen fuelled by stubbornness, waited the year and didn’t change her mind.
âA shelter,â our mother insisted, and Mathilde agreed to that one condition.
I tagged along, seven years old and already planning my trip to the shelter in six yearsâafter all, if they gave in to Mathildeâs nagging, they couldnât very well refuse me when my turn came.
A few hours laterâat least it felt like itâwe were on our way home, an eight-month-old mutt in a cage in the back seat, Mathilde sitting beside it, feeding it kibble through the wire grating. This meant I got to sit in the front, and I took advantage of the opportunity to swing my feet without worrying about her yelling at me for kicking her seat.
So then we had a dog. We got the necessary amenitiesâthe food, the toys, the little scent-trapping bags, the bed that was never slept in because the dog decided early on it wanted to sleep in the pile of laundry on the floor of Mathildeâs room.
The dog shed. Its furâbrindled, so we thought there was maybe some Pit-bull or Boxer in the mixâwas long and soft, dark at the tip and light at the base, so it showed up on any fabric no matter the shade. We added lint-rollers to the list of things we needed to buy every few weeks.
Maggyâthat was the dogâs nameâdied at eight years old, delaying my trip to the shelter by two years.
âWe canât have two dogs in the house at a time, Anne,â my mother explained, vacuuming dog hair off the living room throw pillows.
Maggy apparently also had some Leonberger or Mastiff or something in her, because sheâd grown to 110 pounds of fur and muscle by the time I was thirteen and ready to get my own pet.
âI wonât get a dog then.â
âMaggy doesnât get along with cats, remember?â
âI wonât get a cat either, then!â
âThen what?â
âTake me to the shelter and Iâll know!â
I was sent for my room for using âa tone.â
Maggyâs funeral was held at our grandparentsâ farm in Trois Pistoles, north of RiviĂšre-du-Loup, which is north of Quebec City, which is north of Drummondville, where we lived. All that to say it was far, and we drove the whole way with a 110-pound dead dog in the trunk.
We came home, and after a respectful grieving period, went to a shelter and I chose my pet.
â â â
Enter Kiwi.
Kiwi was talkative, lime green, and inquisitive. A half-moon Conure, the exotic pets specialist said. We adopted him, but were told to come pick him up in a couple days, after weâd bought a big enough cage and had bird-proofed the room he was being kept in.
Kiwi had come to the shelter as a two-year-old. I anticipated losing him before I went to university, judging by Mathildeâs dogâs lifespan.
Two weeks into owning Kiwi, I started flipping through the books on birdkeeping weâd picked up. Feed: fresh fruits, dark leafy greens, beans, seeds, pasta, popcornâŠexcellent, an excuse to get my parents to make me popcorn. Exercise: three to four hours outside of the cage every dayâŠbut the cage is huge! Sixteen cubic feet, the tag had said, the minimum size recommended by the shelter. Why should he need to leave it for exercise?
Lifespan in captivity: about 30 years.
I blinked a few times. I looked up at Kiwi splashing in a shallow water dish, blue-tipped wings splayed, then looked back at the page.
I started rethinking my college plans.
Mathilde never really warmed to Kiwi, and was vocal about how glad she was when she decided to move out for her last year of university the following year.
âIt keeps me up at night, distracts me when Iâm studying. Couldnât you use like a hood or something to muzzle it?â
I considered saying that she was being much noisier than Kiwi had ever been. On reflection, I decided that wasnât actually true; I could, at that very moment, hear him screeching from my bedroom.
â â â
I moved out at the start of university, and brought Kiwiânow six years oldâwith me. The kitchen always had fresh fruits and veggies for him, but Iâd sometimes spoil myself and have some.
Kiwi didnât like moving to an apartment, and was noisier for the first week until he got used to it. I needed a roommate to make sure he didnât get lonely during my long days, but wasnât sure where to start looking.
I met Diane in one of my core courses, and learned three things about her within the first week: she was gay, she liked birds, and she was looking for an apartment.
She moved in five days later, and at Christmas I brought her home to meet my family. It wasnât easy explaining to all my French Catholic relatives that Diane was more than just a âvery good friend.â
â â â
One evening, a few years into our relationship, the doorbell rang. A half-second later Kiwi screamed bloody murder. He had never lived somewhere with a doorbell, and was refusing to get used to it.
While Diane went to answer the door, I set down my book and went to coo at Kiwi from the other side of the cageâweâd upgraded him to a 24-cubic-foot cage after leaving the apartment, and had him set up in the living room, as far away from the noisiest parts of the house as we could.
Kiwi calmed, then clacked his beak and said âMay-soofay,â which was as close as he could come to maĂŻs soufflĂ©, and was one of the only phrases weâd managed to teach him, having adopted him too late to train him properly. I gave him a piece of popcorn from the pre-popped bag kept out of reach of the cage.
âAnne?â Diane called back to me, coming into the living room with George ambling along behind her, his head hanging low and a stuffed-full Batman backpack on his shoulders.
George was Mathildeâs oldest son, and was at the age when threats to run away from home usually ended up with him two blocks down the street, lost and crying. Sometimes, however, he ended up across town at my place.
I took a deep breath and dialled my sister to come pick him up.
âAnnediane,â he said it in one word, âCan I say hi to Kiwi?â
âNo honey, heâs a little worked up right now, maybe later whenâMathilde? Yeah. Yeah, heâsâOkay, heâll be ready.â
I was never sure how she felt about George coming to our house when he ran away. Why not his fatherâs sisterâs place, which was closer anyway and wasnât run by a pair of nastyânow, now, Anne, no need to think like that, I scolded myself.
Mathilde came by ten minutes later and picked up George. She didnât look at Diane, but she nodded her thanks at me, as per usual.
âMay-soofay?â Kiwi chirped from a back corner of the living room. âMay-bo-ti-so. May-soo-bo-ti-fay.â He was twelve, and had recently learned that he was a beau pâtit oiseau.
â â â
George came by to visit about three times a year, usually around the start of school, when he had the most reasons to think his parents were cruel and overbearing and dictatorial. He continued calling me âAnnedianeâ even after Diane and I splitâI think he thought he was saying âAuntie Anne,â but couldnât get his consonants quite right, a lot like beau pâtit oiseau kept mixing his words like a high school English student mixing metaphors.
It stopped for three reasons: George, when he turned eight, decided he was too old to run away; I got a better job in Montreal and moved out of Drummondville for the first time since university; and Mathildeâupset that I hadnât magically turned straight after Dianeâs âcorruptingâ influence on my life had endedâseemed to be enforcing some sort of anti-contamination measures separating me from her family.
A cruel way to talk  about the ending of a thirteen-year relationship, Iâd think to myself whenever she danced around the topic during family reunions, to which I was only grudgingly invited.
âWell,â sheâd told me, when she first heard about it, âI guess this means youâll finally be able to have children at least, doesnât it?â
âWe tried adopting,â Iâd reminded her. âWe were on the waiting list for two years.â
âWell, good thing you didnât; how would you have handled the split? One gets the bird, the other gets the kid? How many parrots have you had by now anyway?â
âStill just the one.â
Mathilde had laughed. âYour parrot is more loyal to you than your partners are!â
Our cousins had laughed along with her, and Iâd smiled. Sheâd actually called Diane my âpartner,â not my âfriend.â
Iâd noticed that George was among those laughing. That had hurt more than anticipated.
â â â
Kiwi hadnât quieted down with age. His regular trips to the vet showed no illness, and he was still eager for his daily three-hour explorations around the spare bedroom, which was painted like a tropical island by the previous owners of the house, whoâd used it as a playroom for their young son.
I set him out of the cage and on one of the empty bookshelves of the bedroomâbird-proofed and free of anything dangerous that he might try to chew on.
At 23, he was not likely to die for a few years yet, and I was still planning my every move around him, though Iâd started to wonder about what Iâd do when he was gone. Maybe get a cockatoo, if I felt lonely without his company.
Then I looked up cockatoos and learned that some of them live to 50 years. I thought of moving into a seniorâs residence with a screeching cockatoo in a 64-cubic-foot cage.
I thought of dying in that seniorâs residence, and of an elderly cockatoo, bonded to an owner now dead, sent to a shelter to be adopted by some kid who didnât realize the commitment they were taking on.
George was seventeen. I saw on his Facebook that he had graduated high school that summer, and was accepted into a good CEGEP in a pre-university program. I was certain his mother was bragging at every opportunity about how sensible he was. Oh, look, I was right. Sheâd commented her congratulations on all his photos and liked everyone elseâs congratulations, to let them know that they were right to praise her son.
I wondered if she would like my comment if I said something nice about George.
I wondered if George would.
â â â
Twenty-two years after Iâd adopted him, Kiwi fell ill. Not untreatably ill, but badly ill. I had to cajole some extra work hours out of my boss to help cover the cost of the checkups and the finicky medicine.
Birds, in case itâs not obvious, are not easy to give medicine to.
I didnât know many other people who loved birds and wanted to babysit a sick Conure, and sometimes I felt guilty having to leave him alone in the house while I went to work. I couldnât let him out of the cage with no one to make sure he didnât eat something he wasnât supposed to.
â â â
Someone knocked at the door. Kiwi, mostly deaf by now, shuffled nervously at the half-heard sound and mumbled his name a few times in worry.
I soothed him with a soft âHush, pâtit,â and went to the door.
George stood outside, twenty years old, head hanging, hair wet from the rain, a half-full suitcase and a rolled-up sleeping bag on the ground beside him.
He looked up at me, eyes tired. âI take it something happened?â I asked dryly, then silently rebuked myself and smiled at George. âNo, you know what, donât tell me. Come on in.â
Kiwi, aware of the presence of other people, began to act up, flitting around and chirping curiously.
George didnât answer. I turned to look, and saw him standing awkwardly across the threshold, a stranger standing beside himâtall, clean-shaven, eyes darting and unsure.
The two were holding hands.
Ah. I see. And then a moment later: Sheâs gonna blame me for this.
This wasnât a case of childish disagreement, or adolescent rebellion. I sighed. Finally, I had reached a point where my family didnât just tolerate me, but this would reopen all the old wounds.
âPeach front?â
I turned at the words, confused and disoriented to be brought back to the here-and-now by such a non-sequitur. George and the stranger had entered the living room. George was baby-talking Kiwi quietly, bobbing his head slightly while Kiwi copied him. The stranger was looking at me, waiting for an answer.
âHuh? Oh, uh, close: heâs a half moon.â
âHeâs lovely,â the stranger said, turning back to smile at the bird.
I watched the three of them for a moment longer. Aw, what the hell, I decided. âLet me set up the hide-a-bed.â
…
Rachel Lalonde is a master’s student in sociology. Raised in a small rural town, xe nurtures a strong connection to the land and the wilderness of southern Quebec even though school, work, and under-funded public transit keeps xem trapped in the city.