Daily Dose of English 3
Pets
Daily Dose of English 3
Intermediate
Hi, everyone. My name is Ben and you're listening to A Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. And you can find all of the transcripts for episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm really glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about pets because I've always had pets. I think pets are really quite important for a household to be vibrant and alive. And I think that owning pets is a really good overall experience. Yes, they can be expensive and annoying and they can add a lot of extra complications to your life. But the payoff is really worth it when you're somewhere for a very long stretch of time. If you're living in a city long term, maybe with a family, then I really do think it's worth it. I've lived most of my life with dogs. My family always had dogs, typically one, but then, well actually the beginning one rather and then we ended up having two for well over 10 years. I think almost like 14 years we had two dogs and it was a really nice contrast. One of the dogs was much larger and the one was a lot smaller. The small one, she was actually a lot more energetic and louder and crazier and the large one was the calm, large, teddy bear-esque dog. And they really made a good duo matching or balancing each other's energies. And so it made a good mix, honestly. And so I do think there's a lot of benefits to having multiple animals, especially because they can care for each other, they can be friends, you know, that sort of thing. And I really like dogs, really all sorts of dogs I think are just excellent pets. Yeah, they can be a lot feistier or stronger and cause more problems. They're harder to train than cats might be. But I think that they end up just being, I don't know, more loyal. They're more, they're nicer to have around, I think is how I want to phrase this. But for the past couple years, I haven't really lived with pets because I've been living on my own. I've been moving more often and it doesn't really make sense to get a dog or a cat if you're going to be not exactly, if you're not sure if you're going to live somewhere for even up to 10, 20 years, because moving with pets is a huge pain and having to take care of them in a new place and understanding, especially if it's cross border, like I don't live in the same country anymore. And that's an even bigger hassle, trying to make sure you have the right papers and getting them abroad and all this stuff can be a big pain. So I decided not to get any pets for myself despite really quite wanting one that would be really nice to have a dog. However, I recently am now living with three cats in my new apartment and it's been really nice actually. I've actually never lived long-term with cats before this or been one of their caregivers, I guess you could say, one of the people that takes care of them. And so this is a bit of a new experience for me, but it's been really nice because I was sort of craving that animal connection, I think, before I really wanted to have animals in the house, this other presence or creature to be with, to exist with because they have a very different energy than humans do. I specifically like their warmth and cuteness obviously is great and they do funny things, right? Because they're not people with real thoughts or the same kind of emotions or whatever. And so they do goofy things that we don't expect. And so I'm living with three cats right now. Their names are Henquibre, Dulio, and Navi. And they all are very different, they have very different personalities and it's really interesting to see them exist, I guess. Henquibre is the youngest and the smallest and the definitely the weirdest. He doesn't know how to retract his claws, so he'll grab things all the time. First off, like anything, he'll grab my feet, my hands, the blanket, whatever it is. But then he can't like disconnect his claws, he doesn't know how, and so we get stuck. And he looks very goofy sometimes because they'll like fall asleep with his arms fully extended in front of him, like attached to something, and it looks very comical. But he is very cute and looks at me with his big blue eyes, lays in my lap, is definitely a very good cute kitty. Okay, no, he's not behind me right now, he's not in his favourite spot. But yeah, that's Henquibre, which is ginger in English, which is a good name, I think, for a cat. The other one, Dulio, is a lot, he's very talkative. You can say he likes to meow, he likes to hang out with you, he likes to come up to you. He likes to be pet, he likes to be cozy. He licks himself a lot, he definitely has a bit of a problem, he sort of licked off part of his fur on his back. But he is very, very affectionate and lovely to be around in general, I think. He's just a good little kitty, likes to climb up on stuff, and so it's funny to look up on the shelf and see a cat, like, above your head. It's a good presence. And he likes to sleep in my office as well, behind me, right against the window on a shelf. The sun doesn't hit it that well, but I can totally understand why it might be warm and nice. And then the last cat, Navi, is a big fraidy cat. She is very frightened of pretty much everything. So much as walk towards her, she'll run away and she'll hide in the smallest, coziest corner of the apartment. She found a spot under the cabinets where there's a hole that she can barely fit into. It leads back behind the cabinets, it can't be very large back there, I can't even see. She loves to go back there because it's totally safe from the outside world. When we first brought her here, she didn't leave for two days, she stayed in there. I think she came out at night because I could hear the scratching of the walls, I think she was struggling to get out. But when she does come out, when she does come up to you, she's very affectionate. She'll press herself against you, ask for pets, and is very, very sweet. But hopefully she calms down a bit more and is less skittish because I feel bad if I walk out into the living room and she's on the couch, because she's gonna run away, I don't need her to run away, I'm not even gonna go close to you. Just calm down, it's fine. It's been really nice having them around. A downside, I will say, is that I now enjoy watching TV more, which is not really something that I want to do more of, but it's a lot cozier and nicer when there's cat's day with you that are gonna be in your lap and keep you warm. And so it's a bit of a, I mean, it's overall, it's a win-win, or it's a win situation. But it is funny that, I guess, watching TV became more desirable now that there's animals around to keep you warm and company. But yeah, I know that a lot of people never had pets or don't like pets, and I think part of that is because of how people maybe grew up, they're not used to them, they haven't really been around animals for that long. But in a lot of ways, I think it's just a good experience for people because you learn lots of important skills, you are forced to do certain things like go outside or do simple chores, keep things clean. And so there's a lot of actual sort of beneficial skills that you learn by owning animals, which I think is just a good benefit as well. I've also seen that it's good for kids as they're growing up because having animals in the house and kind of inherently makes it a little bit dirtier and they sort of get used to having animals around, they build up immunities, they become healthier overall by having animals around that aren't going to get them sick, but are going to expose them to more bacteria or germs or whatever. And plus I think it's just generally a good experience for kids to have connections with animals, they generally like animals, they have fun with them, they still don't have to take care of them yet, but they can learn some responsibilities, their parents can teach them how to take care of an animal, whatever it might be. And at a certain point, kids are going to have to learn how to deal with death. And it's a lot better for that to be an animal or something that is maybe not as important as a close family member, because that's also going to come up at some point in somebody's life and if they have a little bit of practice with an animal, I think it's just a better overall experience. However, there is the classic trope, the stereotype of parents saying that their animals didn't die, they had to go to a special farm because they got too old, but that's just lying to your kids and I don't really think that's necessary. Anyways, that's about all that I have for you today. I think that's enough on the topic of animals. I hope that you enjoyed listening to this little podcast here and that you maybe learned some interesting words or found out something that you didn't know before. But thank you so much for listening, and I will see you tomorrow.
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