Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In my gratitude journal it asked me to write about a pet I loved.  That was easy, as there were many and I loved them all, even the ones no one else in the family cared for.  I loved our nasty cat, seeing that she had been dominated by our slightly older male cat, and really never got her fair share of attention, even having to eat second as long as he was alive.  She had a habit of biting people's legs, but she never bit me.  She badly scratched the ear of one of our pups, but really, she knew what was coming and she was absolutely correct.  We had a dog no one in the family paid attention to but me, and it made me sad.  When we tried to move him two states to here he went crazy, but he'd been out in the country with a big yard and now he had a tiny space on the deck and I was taking care of my dying father and my husband and kids were overwhelmed.  We took him to a shelter to be adopted, but he was old, and he had tried to bite the mailperson.  I still have pangs of criminal guilt at giving him up, but I couldn't be in two places at once.  I mourn both of them, perhaps more than the popular pets we've had, because they did not get the life they deserved, and it wasn't their fault.  They needed much more time and attention that our family gave.  Then there is the lab we adopted from a shelter but he bit the neighbor and had to be given away to a goat farmer who wanted a biting dog.  And the dog I ran over in our driveway, and the cat my friend lost when we moved.  Oh, dear.  I loved them, but no one misses them but me.