THERE I WAS, puttering around the compound in my David Johns Casual—named after the preferred around-the-house stylings of uncle Dave throughout my childhood.

Now, before we get into the topic-at-hand, I have some issues.

Why are women’s underwear called panties, or sometimes undies, whilst men underwear are just plain-old underwear? Obviously someone put thought into giving women’s clothing a special name. And I guess the same is true with pants, otherwise they’d be called overs, or overwear. So, yay for you, pants. You won the name lottery, especially if you are French pants and people call you pantaloons. Or whatever the French say.

Women like their “undies” to be sheer and light, and apparently according to my son that is exactly what my boxer briefs had become over the past decade or-so. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say that my underpants, at least in the back area, were like manly wisps of mountain mist gently drifting away, revealing the hills and valleys underneath. Well how was I to know that? It’s not like I look at my own arse. That much.

That’s when I noticed that my partner’s hermit crab is dead. Or at least I think it’s dead. I’m not sure, because here are the two kinds of hermit crab:

1.) The live hermit crab—which hides all day long in its shell, day after day, alive, and
2.) The dead hermit crab—which hides all day long in its shell, day after day, dead.

It’s been deep in the shell for weeks, but it’s done that before in the five years we’ve had it. Who knows.

My point is, a hermit crab is a lot like my underwear. They are crying out for some reliable indicator that either a) it’s time for a new pet, or b) new underwear. Or both, as in my case.

The topic of getting a cat has now come up. But a friend of mine says that every time you bring a living thing into the house that you are responsible for, you go down another notch on the totem pole. I don’t know if this is true, but I do remember that when I was growing up my dad was the last person to get new things. I would bet his underwear were always wispy mountain smoke, right up until the day I moved out, because the top priority was us kids. So my friend is probably on to something.

Here is a picture:

Sure, it’s cute. But it also reminds us that nature is a red-in-tooth-and-claw struggle for desert.

I ask you, dear readers: should I, or should I not, get a cat?

You can tell me stuff about your cat on Twitter, or read my book to your cat, too. Why not.