Your new word is
SHOWER
My parents have never had a shower – not even have an attachment over the bath. When I got my first house, it had to have a shower! But showers in houses aren’t the only type of shower. There are rain showers, we can shower someone with praise and of course there are baby showers and bridal showers. And we also use the word to describe something falling on us when it’s broken, such as glass. What does this week’s prompt word mean to you?
Fact or fiction, prose or poetry, I would love to read your thoughts on this week’s prompt, but there’s no obligation to share your writing. Here is the work you shared on the last prompt PET.
Pets A Plenty
Upon the sofa lies a dog.
They have a pet cat, too.
They have a mouse inside their house,
a peaceful – sometimes – zoo.
A Tall Tail Tale
Sue dearly wanted an exotic pet
And puzzled ’bout which one to get.
A wild boar or elephant,
An eagle or a skunk (no scent)?
Her quest kept her up all night.
Decided in the morning light.
As she walked along the trail
Among the bushes stood out a tail.
Attached to it was an armadillo,
Rolled it home to share her pillow.
Named him “Fluffy”. Hoped he’d stay.
By now you know Sue’s NUTS, okay?
I always wondered how the girl in pig tails and patent leather Mary Jane’s always got got the best grade in fourth grade. She didn’t appear smarter or better prepared. The answer came in a whisper from Muldoon, my pal. “Teacher’s pet.”
Rall:
a term
of endearment
used by our headmistress
occasionally when in a
good mood
The Misunderstanding
Drew rehearsed the words all afternoon, pacing his kitchen while Biscuit watched from his dog bed with sleepy, indifferent eyes.
“I want you to be my pet,” he finally said aloud, testing it. Biscuit’s tail thumped once against the cushion. Good enough.
At dinner later that evening, with the light from two candles flickering between them, Drew reached across the table and took Sara’s hand. She looked up from her risotto, heart already quickening — three months of dates, of almost-moments, had been building toward something.
“Sara,” he said, voice low with sincerity, “I want you to be my pet.”
Her breath caught. His pet. Something precious and cherished. Something he’d protect and adore. She’d read about this — old-fashioned men who called their sweethearts that. Tender. Possessive in the loveliest way.
“Yes,” she whispered, a tear of joy falling down her cheek.
Drew beamed, dropping Sara’s hand and pulling his phone out of his pants pocket. “Okay, so I was thinking we start slow — morning walks, maybe a little training to get your routine down. Nothing crazy.”
Sara blinked. “Did you just say training?”
“Just the basics. Sit, stay. Oh, and I have a bed picked out — orthopedic, really high quality. I don’t mess around.”
“A bed?”
“Yes, for the corner of my living room.” He turned his phone toward her, showing a large plaid dog bed. “Biscuit has the same one. You two will match.”
Sara stared at the screen. Then at Drew, whose eyes were bright with genuine excitement.
“I thought…” she started.
“I also got you a collar,” he added proudly. “Personalized. Little bone-shaped tag and everything.”
Sara slowly set down her fork. “Drew, I know you’re a bit of a prankster, that you have a keen sense of humor, and can, at times, seem a little eccentric, but I don’t find this funny at all,” she said. “Please tell me you’re being facetious with this pet analogy.”
“Sara, can you imagine the three of us — you, Biscuit, and me — frolicking on the beach and going for long walks in the park?” Drew said. “Me and my two best friends. How great would that be?” He reached out to Sara, grabbed her hand and pulled it toward him. “And just think, Sara, maybe one day soon you will bless us with a litter of puppies.”
“You’re insane!” Sara screamed. She grabbed her coat and purse and ran out of the house.
A pet is never just a pet.
They become routine, comfort, family woven quietly into everyday life.
In our house, life comes with paws.
Five cats — each with their own personality, opinions, and mysterious ways of believing they own the place. Galileo, always observing the world as if he knows secrets the rest of us haven’t figured out yet. Garfield, living up to the name with comfort as a full-time profession. Simba, carrying a little lion-heart spirit. Sofus, gentle and quietly wise. And Chilly, who somehow manages to be both chaos and comfort at the same time.
And then there is Bella — our dog. Faithful shadow. Companion. The one who somehow knows when someone needs extra love before a word is spoken.
Pets have a strange kind of magic.
They don’t care what kind of day you’ve had. They don’t ask for explanations. They simply arrive beside you — purring, wagging, sitting close enough to say: I’m here.
Some days, they make us laugh. Other days, they carry us through.
They teach us patience. Routine. Unconditional love.
And if you have ever loved a pet, you know this truth:
We may think they belong to us —but somewhere along the way, our hearts quietly become theirs.
National Pet Day (which was last week)
I once walked in on my dad watching a game on TV and talking to our dog. He didn’t notice me and I stood there for a minute or two before I asked him, “Who are you talking to?” He answered with the dog’s name and I asked him why. He smiled and replied, “He always agrees with me and when I talk to him I’m not talking to myself.” OK, makes sense and I was thinking fondly of him and this when I wrote these two stances of my poem Talking To Myself, though at the time of my writing it, I didn’t have a dog – I had two cats.
I find I’m never lonely.
In some ways it’s as good as it gets.
And if I need a group discussion
I can always include my pets.
My cats are more courteous than people,
And I wouldn’t trade them for love or money.
They keep their comments to themselves.
Maybe they’ll look at me funny.
I have had five pets since I moved to Houston in 1996. They have all been wonderful companions, and in times when that was something I needed very much.
Pets love us unconditionally.
Mine have been best friends to me.
They don’t know I’m a hack
And they never talk back….
They’ve all been great company.
Today is National Pet Day
And I’m very proud to say
Our little black “toy”
Has brought us so much joy…
Our lives are better in every way!
When we brought Missy into our home, it was a trying time for us. I was just starting the recovery process from a severe side effect from immunotherapy and I was struggling with it both physically and mentally. Then this wonderful very little puppy became part of our family and the dark clouds began to go away. She has been everything that we had hoped for and so much more – she’s smart, sweet, funny and affectionate and a perfect lap dog who doesn’t take up much space in the bed.
Regular readers will know I love dogs and how often I’ve written about Kizzy, Barney, Maggie and Maya, the dogs we’ve had since Hubby and I met in 1989.
All have been pets, totally loved beyond measure and all with different personalities.
I got Kizzy after ex partner’s dog Babs passed away in 1985 from a twisted gut. We also had a rough collie he’d brought back from the building site as the owners had ‘changed their mind’ and were going to have him put down.
My opinion of them is unprintable, whatever the circumstances, as he was a perfectly healthy and fit pedigree animal only 15 weeks old, so I told him to bring him home.
Babs took him as her own pup after we conned her by wrapping him in her bedding as she’d just finished her season. Her reaction was hysterical as she went through the motions of ‘It smells like me, it must be mine, but I don’t remember this!’
He pined for her, so deep was his grief, and I went to a breeder in Bath to ask if he had a GSD of about 2. No luck, but they had Kizzy, who had been tethered and abandoned at their gate.
I brought her home, gained her trust, and when I left the relationship, she came with me.
My 2 nephews and niece, all under 5, used to ride her like a motor bike and she’d let them.
Hubby wasn’t really used to dogs, and Kizzy barked at him, the only person ever. We lost her to mammary cancer in December 1990 when she was about ten, and I like to think she had five good years with me.
To read more, click here:
Yr Enwi…
“Slowly Liam opened his eyes. “Aye, ‘tis time ‘tis it?” After cleaning himself up, Liam gathered his coat, cap and a fancy cane. Lorelle and Clarissa could hear him thinking of which ancestor would be honored to name the newborn. As of yet he didn’t know if the child was a boy or a girl.”
Liam Griffith hadn’t quite heard what his Guardian Angel had said. His grandson had been named for him and was William, known as Will or Young Will. Perhaps if the child were a boy
Perhaps after his own grandfather, Gareth? A girl could be after his own beloved wife who had passed too many years to count now; Rhiannon.
Young Will saw the face of an angel in his little girl – it seems to be true that all parents think their children are angels, especially newborns. Will left his own parents to watch over his wife and baby. The lad knew the path that led to his taid’s cottage. Surely if the elder were already on his way they would meet up and head back to the St. Charles hotel and hospital together.
Clarissa Liam’s Guardian angel along with Lorelle who was a newer Guardian angel belonging to the Threads and Knots looked ahead on the path that the elder was taking to make sure there were no ‘bumps’ in the road or holes that his cane might catch. Clarissa let Lorelle know that Young Will was also on the way.
*****
At the hospital Will’s parents secured a rocking chair for Liam to sit in when he named the baby. Young Will’s wife, Meg also thought about her daughter’s middle name. Soon enough the elder and his wyr beside him arrived. Liam sat in the rocker and held out his hands – “Come me pet, time to name ye.”
Threads And Knots
just one of heaven’s
clean up crews
Petty Incursions
In the year before I retired, my soon-to-be husband moved into the house he’d bought in the Fens. It was one of a terrace of former farmworkers cottages on a drove in the middle of fields. When we viewed the place, I was the one who took an interest in the house. He was more interested in the large double garage and generous parking spaces on the plot.
He subsequently spent hours in that garage, unpacking equipment, installing a shower room, servicing our motors, and watching the mice run along shelves and rafters as he drank his frequent cups of tea. There was no attempt to evict the garage mice as he enjoyed watching their antics, and none of the dogs we had then seemed to mind them.
Things changed when we returned from a week away to find a small lake under the shower room in the corner of the garage, where mice had nibbled through the hose carrying water from the house. After that, we remembered to turn off the garage water supply whenever we were away, but the damage was done. David decided the mice had to go. Steps were taken to deter them, and new (electric!) garage doors installed to keep them out once evicted.
To read more, click here
Hamster Pete
I had a pet hamster named Pete,
Who stored all his snacks in a headp,
He’d stuff both his cheeks,
For days and for weeks,
The collapse into a very deep sleep!
The Joy of Having a Pet
I grew up not having any pets even though I really wanted a dog. However, both my parents were working, and my brother and I walked to and from school every day. We stayed by ourselves until our parents came back home. That is not a good situation for a dog or for many other kinds of pets. This all changed after I met my wife. She was used to having dogs and other pets. While we were still students we had an aquarium, hamsters, a rabbit, and a cat. Unfortunately, I was extremely allergic to the cat and I got very sick. Luckily, we found someone who could take care of the cat.
After we got married and had kids we had a couple of aquariums, a pet snake, a frilled lizard, hamsters, and eventually dogs. On one occasion we went fishing in a lake here in Texas. We used minnows for bait. My daughter wanted to take the leftover minnows home and put them in an aquarium. She named all of them Sally. Sally #1, Sally #2, Sally #3, Sally #4, Sally #5, Sally #6, etc. She was very young at the time and did not take care of her Sallys’ very well. She wanted them to have cranberry juice, so she poured cranberry juice in the aquarium. She wanted them to have a beautiful red aquarium, so she poured red paint in it. Well eventually the minnows died.
Our first dogs as a family were our Labrador Baylor and our German Shepherd Baby. To be precise, Baylor was a mix, one quarter Rhodesian Ridgeback and three quarters yellow Labrador. They were both rescues that were adopted by our niece (Baylor) and Claudia’s sister (Baby). They were both wonderful dogs. Baylor loved swimming and he was brave and very playful.
To read more, click here
Zoe
Born – Dec 2019
From the streets of Kentucky
To the ‘burbs of Toronto
Young Zoey was plucky
But needed help, pronto!
With a lovely black coat
And a cute beggar’s face
A scar on her throat
Did not debase
What was her story?
Nobody knew
It must have been gory
The things she went through
Stuck in a shelter
Ready to die
Had they felt her
Pain – did they cry?
At last, help arrived
From a country up north
Young Zoey survived
Life got better, henceforth
It was love at first sight
When we met this sweet girl
The feeling was right
Let our new life unfurl!
–
Tasha
Nov 5, 1991 – May 22, 2007
‘Twas many years ago
But I miss you so
And the tears still flow
When that date comes along
I try to be strong
So hard to go on
All that I do
Reminds me of you
Which makes me feel blue
R.I.P. PRINCIPESSA
Susan Batten:
Does My Hero Need a Pet?
Thinking about pets in our favourite stories, I began to consider the parts they have to play. They may be centre stage from page one; Winnie the Pooh or Paddington bear, characters in their own right. Sometimes the pet outgrows its owner: why do I remember Scoobydoo but not Tintin? And isn’t Snoopy a bigger draw than Charley Brown?
In a famous series of novels, the animal companions have a well-defined role to play. Hedwig is the first, the exotic white owl which is Harry’s passport into the wizarding world.
Errol is a hapless avian loser, but he’s somehow part of the Weasley family set-up.
Mrs. Norris, the creepy cat belonging to the creepy school caretaker, Argus Filch, steps into the limelight when she is petrified by the basilisk. This creature is a nightmare in itself, a constant threat in the walls, slithering through an entire novel and providing a spectacular climax.
Scabbers, Ron’s ancient rat, comes into his own to fuel animosity between Hermione and Ron Weasley and finally to… but no spoilers. There might be someone out there who hasn’t read Harry Potter or seen the films. Let’s say that Scabbers’ transformative powers are needed for the later stages of the overall plot.
Fawkes the phoenix, proves to be a counterpart to Nagini, the lethal snake so dear to the Dark Lord. Fawkes, the constant factor, represents the honorable wizarding world in the same way that the Headmaster is the mainstay of Hogwarts. The skills and sensitivity of the Phoenix support the adventurers in their darkest hour in The Chamber of Secrets and his final lament after the drama of The Half Blood Prince brings a poignant note to this pivotal moment.
We are left with Nagini, the snake, not least amongst the pets. She is Voldemort’s faithful killing tool, ultimately essential to his survival. Whenever she features in the story she feeds our fear of these reptiles and adds to the growing sense of menace.
There we are: pets reflecting their owner’s character, pets taking the plot forward, pets as symbols, pets used to enhance the atmosphere … There can be no doubt that a pet in the story can be a great addition to the cast of the show.
Queen Moji wouldn’t
demean herself to answer
to the title “Pet.”
A Pet
1.
you took away
my last hope of safety,
my last reason to believe
that love, no matter how damaged,
could still be love.
you extinguished the final light
i kept alive through every storm,
and left me alone
with the dark that followed.
i’m not some furry, cute pet
you can hold when you’re lonely
and abandon when you’re whole again.
i’m not a comfort toy,
waiting on a shelf of forgotten things,
gathering dust until you need me
to fill the empty spaces in your chest.
i am a person.
a heart bruised raw from hoping,
a house with its doors torn off,
still shivering in the cold you left behind.
so don’t call it love
when you only reach for me
when it’s convenient.
love doesn’t pet a wound
and then leave it bleeding.
2.
i’m not some furry, cute pet
that you can pet
whenever it’s convenient for you
offering warmth with one hand
while the other leaves me out in the rain.
because every time you return,
you ask me to forget the hunger,
the cold,
the waiting.
and every time you leave,
you take another piece of me with you.
What Remains After the Hour
In the quiet room where the hours soften,
you sit across from me and somehow
make the world less sharp.
You call me pet,
and the word lands gently,
like a blanket placed around trembling shoulders,
like a hand reaching through the dark
without demanding anything in return.
I carry that word home.
I carry the way you listen,
as though every tangled thought
deserves patience,
as though every wound
can be met with kindness
instead of judgment.
I know there are walls around your care,
boundaries drawn with wisdom,
yet sometimes my heart forgets.
It only remembers warmth.
It only remembers how safe it feels
to place my fears in your hands
and watch you hold them carefully.
I am attached to you
in the way thirsty ground
becomes attached to rain,
in the way a lighthouse
becomes precious to a ship
that has spent too long in rough seas.
Not because you rescued me,
but because you stayed.
You stayed present
through tears and silence,
through stories I was ashamed to tell,
through the endless circling of pain
that I thought no one could bear to hear.
And each time,
you met me with compassion.
There is love in care like that—
not the love of possession,
not the love of fairy tales,
but something quieter.
The love of being seen.
The love of being understood.
The love of finding one person
who does not turn away.
So when you smile and call me pet,
something inside me settles.
For a moment,
the frightened parts of me
believe I am worthy of gentleness.
And perhaps that is the gift
you’ve been giving me all along:
Not yourself,
but the possibility
that I might someday speak to myself
with the same tenderness
you have always shown me.
grey squirrel scampers,
the terrier playful, poised
—a tree’s pet project.
As a child Kitty was brought up to be an independent woman. Hard work became a normal routine for her and she often found herself hoisting a kibble filled with water up from the well each morning. This was the beginning of a long day of work and when she finished work and returned home she had enough time to feed her pet billy goat she had named kid before retiring for the evening.
The first pet that I ever had was a rabbit called Timmy. I really wanted a dog, but we lived in rooms and I was unable to have a dog. However, we were allowed access to the garden at the back of the house, and my parents said that I could have a rabbit in a cage out there. He was absolutely lovely and I loved him a lot, but it was not long before my parents moved house, and I couldn’t take my beloved Timmy with me. I cried a lot and my mother told me that he was going to be given to one of my friends and that we would go back to see him from time to time. We never did, and one day when I was in my fifties, I said to my mother,
“When are we going back to see Timmy?”
The second pet that I had was a budgie. He was called Billy, and he was in a cage in the middle room at my grandparents’ farm. I was so proud of him and he fascinated me. Then, horror of horros, I went in to see him when I got up one morning, and he was dead on the bottom of the cage. I screamed like mad. My grandfather was in the big farmhouse kitchen at the time, along with my mother and my grandmother. He was a very taciturn man and I was a little frightened of him. He never ever spoke to me. I was just there, as far as he was concerned. My mother ran into the middle roon and looked at the dead budgie, and declared that there was probably a draught in the room and he got cold. This did not make me feel much better. It was the first real tragedy of my young life. It is something I have never forgotten.
Since then, I have had loads of pets in the form of dogs. We have had nine dogs during our marriage and at one time we had four of them. One of them had come as a stray. Our life has been dogs, and now that our precious Hope has gone, we cannot live without a dog and so we are about to get a new puppy. He will come in two weeks time. He is only six weeks old right now. I look forwards very much to getting him.
Lose Control
Jerry’d been on the slope* nineteen weeks the day it happened.
The days had lost their edges by then. Twelve hours of cold metal and colder wind, then twelve hours of gray- eating too much, sleeping too long, lying around in the same sweatpants his roommate kept threatening to burn. His playlist running on loop like a rosary.
He’d taken the job for the house. The house he and Delia decided they needed before they got married- before they had any kids. The one with the wrap-around porch she said she’d string lights across. But the math was brutal- if he flew home every R&R, the ticket prices would swallow the dream whole. So, he stayed in Alaska, and she stayed down south, and the house stayed imaginary. And through it all, he missed her more than he ever believed was possible.
He was in a bad way that afternoon. A Lose Control kind of bad one. The sky came in bruised and fast, and the wind had a personal quality, the kind that found the gap at your collar and stayed there.
He and Rourke were working on the pressure manifold for one of the drilling platforms when the alarm went- a sharp metallic shriek the wind tried to swallow. Rourke had been on the slope long enough that urgency looked the same on him as boredom.
Jerry felt it go wrong before he could name it. The vibration in the valve assembly wasn’t right- too high, too uneven, something harmonically off in the metal.
“Rourke-“
The wind took it.
Rourke reached for the wheel.
The snap was a gunshot. The assembly blew- Jerry saw the physics of it before it happened and then it caught Rourke across the shoulder and the man’s boots left the platform. Just like that.
Jerry caught his jacket with both hands.
The pull was extraordinary. Not heavy so much as absolute, gravity making its argument through the full length of another man’s body. His gloves slipped a quarter inch. His shoulder joint made a sound he catalogued to think about later. The wind shoved them both toward the edge.
He hauled back. Inches. His boots finding traction on nothing, finding it anyway.
When they hit the deck, both of them breathing like they’d surfaced from deep water, Rourke’s shoulder was already wrong-shaped, his face the color of old snow.
That night his phone buzzed. Pinky, his pet name for Dalia. He almost let it go.
“Hey, Ween,” she said. “You sound weird.”
“I almost died today.”
The silence came down fast.
“Tell me,” she said.
He told her- the valve, the wind, Rourke’s weight pulling him toward the edge of a platform fifty feet above nothing. He told her how close the arithmetic had been.
When he finished, he could hear her breathing.
“Ween.” Her voice was careful in the way it got when she was working not to cry. “I don’t want the house that bad.”
He swallowed. “I know.”
“I want you. Alive.”
He laughed, and it broke in the middle.
“Pinky.”
“Yeah.”
“That Teddy Swims song came on after. And it wasn’t about missing you anymore.” He stopped. “It was about never seeing you again.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Come home next rotation. We’ll figure the rest out.”
He lay there in the dark, the slope groaning around him in the wind.
In that moment, he didn’t want the house. Or the porch.
Just her.
–
*Working on the slope refers to holding a job on Alaska’s North Slope oil fields- one of the most remote, industrial, and extreme work environments in the United States. To “work on the slope” is to live in a suspended state- half in the world, half out of it- trading comfort and connection for wages, endurance, and the hope that the sacrifice will eventually buy something better.
***
Esther Chilton 
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