“I’m through with pets when Moose dies,” Darla was saying. “Shut up, Moose!”

She sounded as if she meant it, but I had my doubts. I’ve known Darla for more than 30 years during which time she has never been without at least one pet of some kind. Dogs, feral cats and ferrets have all been taken in by Darla, not to mention the hummingbirds and other wildlife she has fed and befriended.

“I’m done!” she said.

This from a woman who took pity on the feral Peter, domesticated him and nursed him through his last six diabetic years, administering insulin injections and carefully monitoring his diet every day.

“Yip! Yip!” Moose chimed in, apparently having nothing better to do than stand next to Darla and contribute to the phone conversation. Perhaps he sensed that I was the person on the other end of the line. Moose has never cared for me, and once even went so far as to bite my hand. Since most of his teeth had been removed, however, he basically only gummed me.

Darla had stories about Peter, how he had once faced down a deer, how he used to go frogging in a nearby marsh and come home wet and muddy.

“I loved Peter. But never again,” Darla said darkly.

“Yip! Yip!” Moose shrieked.

We talked about the dogs and cats we had growing up, how they used to roam freely on the streets and through people’s yards, how cancer in pets was not heard of. Rabies, yes. Getting run over by a car, yes, certainly. But cancer, no.

Not that animals didn’t get cancer back then; some probably did. We just didn’t know about it. People didn’t take animals to see the veterinarian the way we do now. You often heard about a dog or cat dying of old age.

When its time came, according to the common consensus, an animal would typically go off by itself and die. Cats, especially, were known to disappear, crawling under the porch to breathe their last.

Our house always harbored at least one cat, usually more, because our female cats actually had kittens, unlike most pets of today. A big gray-striped tom was believed to have sired all the kittens in the neighborhood.

“He must carry a calendar,” my father once remarked, a comment that made no sense to me at the time.

My mother was the animal lover. My father and the cats maintained a cool relationship, if a relationship could be said to have existed at all. My father observed the cats with some interest but as if from a great distance, while the cats for their part did nothing to ingratiate themselves or strike up a friendship.

Like my mother, I love animals, despite what Moose may tell you. I especially love my elderly cat, Jupiter; yet I told Darla “I hope when Jupiter’s time comes he’ll crawl under the house and die quietly of old age like cats used to do. Veterinarians cost a fortune.”

Soon afterward Jupiter started licking his food instead of eating it. I took offense at this at first, the way a person sometime takes offense at the bad manners of a significant other. Then he started drooling. All my tough talk about crawling under the porch to die alone went right out the window. I was on the phone to the vet.

A couple of days later, Jupiter was home from veterinary surgery, nearly as toothless as Moose, and so skinny!

“Cats are tough,” the vet had reassured me, but still I watched him like a hawk. A mother hawk. Was he in pain? Why was he sleeping that way? Why wasn’t he hungry? He was improving, gradually, day by day.

Yesterday when I got home from Price Chopper in Lake Placid carrying bags full of every kind of broth, soft cat food, tuna, sardines and a rotisserie chicken, I found to my joy and relief that Jupe was hungry again! Ravenous! He immediately licked up the pricey broth, and then together we polished off the rotisserie chicken.

And yes, I had to eat my words.

Have a great week!

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the Lake Placid News for more than 20 years.)