I’m not big into pets. I was fine with never having one, but my children…they wanted a pet.

“Please,” they’d say.

“No way,” I’d say.

Back and forth, on and on, they wouldn’t let it go no matter how many times I’d say NOOOOO!

Well…this week, my oldest son drags me outside. Inside the wagon they use for mowing lawns was a bunny—no, not a bunny—a rabbit. A wild, who-knows-how-many-diseases, tick infested rabbit.

“But mom, it’s nice. It didn’t run away. It just let us pick it up. Please, let us keep it.”

Now I’m sure it’s riddled with disease. “Holy cow, no! It’s a wild animal. If it didn’t run away, it means it’s sick. Go inside and wash up, now!”

The darn rabbit just sat in my front yard where my oldest placed it before going inside. For hours it didn’t move! Clearly something was wrong with the animal.

It was lovely listening to my three children cry, telling me what a mean mother I was. Nothing I said was getting through to them, so I called for backup—my mother-in-law. She lives on a farm, and my children know she loves animals. They’ll listen to her, I thought.

But that phone call snowballed into something else…

While she did backup my claim about the animal most likely being sick, and not a good candidate for a pet, she was too sympathetic to my children’s desire for an animal. And lucky me one of the farm cats is having kittens soon. You can guess what happened next.

You got it—we will soon be the proud owners of a new kitten. Sigh…so much for never having a pet.