Every reason why you shouldn’t get a house pet in second year

They’re never a good idea


So you’ve finally convinced everyone that your second year house is “like a family”, which is impressive for the amount of time that you’ve actually known them for. But what family is complete without a pet?

Even if you did find a way to hide your pet from your new landlord that didn’t involve throwing it out the window during random inspections, there are a lot more reasons why you shouldn’t break the terms of your tenancy agreement and smuggle one in the first place. Reasons I’ve had to be told about, and I am still not happy with.

Deciding on a species

s/o my dog

The amount of arguments you’ll have over a giant rabbit or a tortoise isn’t worth it. Any friendship between a cat lover and a dog lover will reach breaking point, and that weird flatmate who thinks he speaks Parseltongue and wants a snake will be evicted.

It’s a shared responsibility

I blame the hamster

Living in a large group will teach you that communal living is one massive game of chicken when it comes to taking out the bins and wiping the salmonella and sambuca off the surfaces. I doubt anyone’s going to bother scooping the cat shit.

Also, when you go home for the weekend, you’d either have to take your beloved pet on the train with you or dump it on your flatmates who didn’t even want it in the first place.

Can you even afford it?

Flea injections, vet bills, litter, dewormer, toys and many other expenses to support your pet will cause your student loan to take a massive hit. Starving yourself for a week so you can go out on Friday is hard enough as it is. You’re more likely to be eating your micro-pig than sourcing its chemical-free alfalfa.

Are you even capable?

You ring your mum every five minutes asking how to take care of yourself and you can’t even keep your work ethic alive, let alone an animal. Plus I doubt anything can survive on mixers and tequila limes.

You’re too busy

You should spend every second you possibly can with your pet because today could be their last day. A friend of mine’s cat ‘ran away’. It’s been a few months now though, doesn’t look like Timmy is coming back…

Hedgehogs have an insatiable demand for affection and require constant attention, otherwise they have low self-esteem and go into hibernation mode, like me. Do you really have the time for that?

You’ve got to love it

At the end of the day if you don’t love it so much that it’s going to make it onto your Snapchat story every day, then what even is the point.

Then at the end of the year when you and your flatmates go your separate ways, only one of you will be able to keep it over the summer. What are you going to do when uni finishes and they take it home forever?