No longer caged but part of the family

A news snippet about pets being allowed to accompany their “parents” in a Japanese bullet train to a resort town made interesting reading recently. Earlier, reportedly, pets were allowed in a carrier and were kept caged during journeys.

In an innovative move now, an entire carriage is dedicated to pets and their owners and cage-free pets can enjoy the passing scenery on the trip along with their human families.

The report took me back in time to the fourteen years that we had our cherished pet in our lives. Those were busy years, with regular transfers from one place to another and annual leave during which we always headed to our parental homes, starting by train in the northernmost state of the country or the Western desert or somewhere on the Gangetic Plain and trundling along to the centre and south of the Deccan Plateau with a couple of changes en route.

Pets were allowed to travel with us in those days provided our fellow passengers did not object. If they did object, we would have to cage and confine the pet in the guard van for the duration of the journey and we therefore lived in dread of anyone kicking up a fuss when they saw our large German Shepherd with the cold stare of a wolf and a demeanour that said, “Don’t mess with me!”

We knew, of course, how gentle and loving she was. She had welcomed our son into her space quite willingly after almost three years of being the indulged only “child” in our home, but with him, she was proprietorial.

No one could reach out to him with a sudden movement. No one could touch his toys without his say-so, a great help to him when acquisitive children were around; but, because of those qualities, we could never be sure whom she would decide was persona non grata on our journey.

What if a travelling companion held out a toffee to the child she felt duty bound to guard? Would she lunge to protect him — and scare that poor well-meaning soul half to death? What if someone walking carelessly along the corridor held onto the bars of our window? Would her growls be mistaken for a lion’s roar?

She had a long history of never biting anyone. Growl, glare, bare her teeth, snap, lunge — she did it all, but actually bite and draw blood: Never! But we were well aware that anyone who witnessed any of those preparatory “warnings” would not have the confidence we did that she was all fluff and no real dangerous stuff!

So, we were never sure if our pet would get the “all clear” from fellow passengers or we would be told to send her off to a dark space in the guard van. In our minds, it was always touch-and-go but thankfully, in all those fourteen years that we travelled to and fro and around the country we managed to keep her with us.

She grew accustomed to and even enjoyed those journeys. She would hop onto the train with alacrity and plop onto the coveted window seat and then look at us with a half-grin as if to say, “Get me down if you can!”

Naturally, we let her have her way. She stayed at the window and enjoyed the passing scenery and the breeze on her face and let everyone else around her in the compartment, familiar and unfamiliar, go about their business without a second glance.

I wonder, however, whether she would have been as amenable if she had been on that bullet train in a dedicated carriage with dozens of other cherished pets and their indulgent parents, each one convinced that they were not just a part of the family but the heart of it.

— Cheryl Rao is a writer based in India