How do you know what to do?

RE: Pets

Tessa

I have 1 dog and 3 cats and although I love them to bits they drive me NUTS! I am contemplating rehoming them purely for me and my son's own health and safety. Mentally I feel I can not cope with a whole lot at the moment, we ourselves are being bitten by fleas and lastly my son hasn't been able to go out in the backyard since we got our dog over a year ago. So now I'm in a dilemma. I always thought it was awful when people bought animals and then just got rid of them. I really don't want to be one of those people. But how do I justify the way we live at the moment, where pets seem to get top priority over ourselves? Do I keep them or try and find them new homes? Will someone love them as much as I love them? Is there anyway I can keep them and find a way for it to work? I really don't know what to do at the moment - I have so many questions running through my head (as you can see)! Has anybody else had to part with a beloved pet for the family's sake? Did it all work out in the end?

Chrissy

Without a dog we can once again grow our own vegetables, plant fruit trees, hang the washing outside, have friends over and most importantly Jesse can play out in the backyard again! Without cats there wouldn't be a flea problem, we wouldn't get woken up at all hours of the night from them scratching on the door to be let out, I wouldn't have to vacuum every single day and I would have a spare room again (that's right the cats have their own room)! Life would become a whole lot easier but would the house feel empty without them? What would I do without the pitter patter of tiny paws? Who would be waiting at the door for me when I came home? I wish we lived on a large property so I didn't have to make this choice. If we had a bigger yard (we're on about 400sqm) Tessa would have more room to run around which would lessen her boredom and therefore ease the destructive behaviour. And if we had a slightly bigger house the cats could sleep in the laundry (we don't have a laundry in this house) instead of in the spare bedroom. Which means more room and more sleep for us and then hopefully they could go back to being purely indoor cats. Right now they go outside with my supervision. Oh! What to do... What to do... Suggestions anyone?

Crumpet

(Just uploading their pictures has made me feel guilty for even thinking about getting rid of them. This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.)