I must stop watching Animal Planet. Every time I flip to Channel 86, it puts ideas in my head about acquiring kooky pets that have no business sharing a Manhattan studio with a human and a domesticated feline, and I wind up in chat rooms on the Discovery Channel’s Web site, asking everyone who logs on if they know whether the Nile water bug includes the housecat among its natural enemies. I thought I had gotten over my obsession with exotic pets after an incident at San Francisco’s Exploratorium last fall, when I became immediately and irretrievably obsessed with a tiny and extremely poisonous species of frog and wanted to take one home with me, to the point where I had begun tapping the glass and cooing, “Oh, hello, little froggie. What a niiiiice widdle froggie. Would the little froggie like to hop into Sarah’s bag? Awwww, that’s a good little froggie-poo,” and the Biscuit had to drag me bodily away from the “Frogs Of The World” display while I protested that no, I did not want something from the gift shop with that frog on it — I wanted that very frog, the bitty little black frog with the light-blue racing stripe, and it mattered not a whit to me that I’d die if the bitty little black frog chose to sink its bitty little fangs into my knuckle, or that I had no idea on what bitty little cuisine the bitty little black frog feasted, or that my non-bitty non-little cat would eat the frog and die a horrible death from the poison and then I’d have no pets at all, bitty or otherwise.

I don’t know what comes over me, I really don’t. I love my cat to pieces, and yet when I come home from running errands, I can never just walk past 33rd & Bird without stopping to window-shop, and the next thing I know, I’ve started financing the purchase of the rare paradise finch in my head. No rational person would pay upwards of four hundred dollars for a bird that would become a neon cat treat five minutes after she got it home . . . but a rare paradise finch can fly, and do cunning little things with seeds, and hop about on its little pink legs, and I look longingly at the rare paradise finch on its little branch, combing its little feathers with its little beak. I stand on the sidewalk and daydream about naming my rare paradise finch “Atticus” and training it to perch cleverly on my head while I sit at my desk, and I’ve just about talked myself into believing that Hobey — an inveterate product of apartment living who spends most of his time sawing logs on my windowsill — wouldn’t know what to do with a bird in the first place, and then a woman walks by with a greyhound on a leash. Hey, a greyhound! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Greyhounds look reaaaaally cool, and icky men wouldn’t talk to me about my boobs if I had a big dog with me, and — uh, gee, it is a pretty big dog for a Manhattan apartment, actually. But — thin! It’s a thin dog! If it curls up, it won’t take up that much space at all! And Hobey wouldn’t eat a greyhound, right? Ooh, but the greyhound might try to eat the Hobe. At the very least, the greyhound would chase the Hobe, and greyhounds run kinda fast. Okay, scratch the greyhound.

But if I got a greyhound puppy . . . all right, okay, I know, I have to stop. And I really have to stop watching that “Crocodile Hunter” show. That Steve Irwin guy puts ideas in my head. Would I have any desire to possess a komodo dragon if I hadn’t watched Steve Irwin fleeing from one and laughing his fool head off? No. But he makes getting chased up a tree by one look so festive. I briefly contemplated acquiring a komodo, strapping a digital camera to its head, and entertaining millions with my attempts to outrun it, but had to discard the idea as one not worthy of dying for. Still, I see Steve Irwin charging through the underbrush and yelling “wait up!” at a wallaby, and I want a wallaby. Wallabies look so sweet, so unthreatening. A wallaby probably wouldn’t eat a cat, right? And it can carry my stuff. I’ll bring it to the grocery store with me and tie it up outside, and when I get done shopping, I can stash a bag of non-perishables in its pouch, and then we’ll go to the florist and get it a snack. But it would need room to hop, I suppose, and I don’t have enough room for a wallaby to hop in – well, maybe one hop, no more than that. But I have room for an alligator. I could fit an alligator in a studio apartment. It could live in the bathtub; I’d just switch to sponge bathing. I’d buy it a muzzle and take it for walks, and I’d feed it a few of the annoying yappy dogs on my floor. “Arf arf arf! Rrrrrrarf!” [“Chomp!”] Heh. No, that probably wouldn’t work out so well. Okay, I’ll change the channel now, before – awww, look at the little turtles running to the sea! Run, little turtles, run! Hey, I could get a turtle, a little one. Turtles don’t need room to run around, turtles don’t prey on anything, and the Hobe couldn’t eat the turtle because it could hide in its shell. On the other hand, rumor has it that turtles smell, and quite frankly, I already have a pet that sleeps twenty-nine hours a day; I don’t know that I should add one that doesn’t do anything. I mean, what do turtles . . . do, exactly? I haven’t seen a whole lot of turtle toys or “turtle nip,” so I guess they just walk. Slowly. And swim. Slowly. Actually, turtles don’t even swim so much as they float around, waiting to become soup. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I have the necessary patience to own a turtle. I’d spend all my time bugging it, and it would spend all its time hiding in its shell from the annoying human that keeps sticking her face into the top of the tank and booming, “Oh, HELLO, turtle!” But I saw one at the pet store the other day that had a really cool shell that looked like abalone tiles. I sort of wouldn’t mind if it never came out to walk . . . or float . . . if it had a cool shell.

And I’ve got to stop going to the pet store. I put off going, and I know I should have just gone to Pets.com, but Pets.com doesn’t have Leopard Mouse. Leopard Mouse is a satiny catnip mouse who used to have black whiskers and black ears and little black eyes, or I think he did, because the eyes got bitten off twenty minutes after Leopard Mouse came out of the packaging, and the whiskers lasted maybe a day, and there’s not much left of the ears either except one wisp of felt on the left side. Hobey adores Leopard Mouse. He tosses Leopard Mouse around with his claw and then runs after him; he sneaks up on Leopard Mouse and pounces on him and rolls around on top of him; if he’s moving from one nap spot to another, he carries Leopard Mouse with him. Hobey has gone through a succession of Leopard Mice over the years, and I’ve learned one immutable fact: do not, under any circumstances, attempt to give the old, skanky, ripped-up, stuffing-leaking Leopard Mouse the heave-ho without first buying a shiny new Leopard Mouse to distract Hobey with. Hobey can tell that I have thrown Leopard Mouse away, and into which trash can, and despite the fact that Leopard Mouse has wasted away to threads and lint and that trying to play with him makes Hobey start sneezing, Hobey will sit by the kitchen garbage bin and howl and howl and howl, and then I’ll hear the “klebump” of a cat landing on the counter, followed by more howling, followed by a suspicious silence, followed by the “fffffffffffwump” of a cat landing in the trash, followed by the “eeeee-clonk” of the trash tipping over, and then Hobey will come trotting out of the kitchen all covered with coffee grounds with a straw wrapper dangling from his ear and a cigarette-ash-festooned Leopard Mouse in his mouth, and he’ll hiss at me around Leopard Mouse and retire under the bed. I had no choice. I had to go to Petland to get him a new Leopard Mouse, and once inside Petland, I found myself drawn into the back room where they keep the frogs and turtles and snakes and dwarf bunnies. Aw, dwarf bunnies. I watched the snakes for a while. Snakes don’t do much either, but they look pretty cool. I’d like to have a snake, but if I get a little one, Hobey will play with it to death, and if I get a big one, I’ll come home to find Hobey curled in an innocent little circle, surrounded by a more menacing, boa-constrictive circle intent on squeezing the life out of the Hobe – or worse, the snake sunning itself on the radiator with a Hobe-shaped lump right in its middle. And I suspect I’d have a difficult time getting people to come over for cocktails if they thought a pit viper might sink a fang into their ankles.

It always comes back to the Manhattan apartment and the Hobe. A frog fits in a Manhattan apartment, but a frog makes a lot of sudden movements, and there’s nothing a cat finds more attractive in a plaything than sudden movements. A bird fits in a Manhattan apartment too, but a bird is a snack on the wing to a cat. Last week, a pigeon curled up to catch forty winks on my neighbors’ windowsill, and Hobey hunched on top of my air conditioner and wiggled his backside and made growly noises at the pigeon – for three hours. Of course, I remain unconvinced that Hobey could dispose of a pigeon even if Hobey happened to yawn and said pigeon flew into his open mouth and then died of a heart attack. I mean, Hobey ignores all other animals on television, with the exception of zebras; he just has no concept of reality. I had another cat over for a “play date” once, and the Hobe spent the afternoon hunkered down by the closet, fluffed up to the size of a small pony, watching the other cat stroll around like she owned the place and play with his toys and eat his kibble. He’s not exactly The Orange Death, but still, one enthusiastic pounce and a lot of the smaller outlandish pets would die of internal injuries. It’s the same reason I can’t have fish. I don’t think he’d catch any, but I have a pretty good idea of how many times he’d fall into the aquarium and upset the ecosystem. And what if I get my hands on a manta ray – and I really want a manta ray; ever since I got to pet one at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I’ve really really wanted a manta ray – and I have to buy a big old tank to give the manta ray enough room to swim around and . . . be a ray, or whatever? I’d have to make the Hobe wear a life jacket. Or water wings. I can’t make a cat wear water wings. It’s too undignified. And Hobey gets on my nerves sometimes, but I don’t want to see the whims of the food chain taken out on him. I’d really like an owl, for instance, but I don’t need to see the owl cruise up near the ceiling and then swoop down for the kill, eat my cat, and spit him out as a compact orange pellet several hours later, and I’ve wanted a raccoon of my very own ever since reading Rascal as a kid, but let’s face it, a raccoon could kick the crap of Hobey with one black paw while stealing my keys and every penny in the place with the other.

So, I’ll stick with the cat. I don’t have the room for any other pets, and besides, the mildew in my shower isn’t just “exotic,” it’s harmless and free.

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