Lesson 2 Are Pets Good for Mankind？
　　TextPets Are Good for You The basic meaning of “pet” is an animal we keep for emotional¹ rather than economic reasons. A pet animal is kept as a companion, and we all need companions to keep us feeling happy. But pets offer us more than mere² companionship； they invite us to love and be loved. Many owners feel their pets understand them, for animals are quick to sense anger and sorrow. Often a cat or dog can comfort us at times when human words don't help. We feel loved, too, by the way pets depend on us for a home, for food and drink. Dogs especially, look up to their owners, which makes them feel important and needed.
　　A pet can be something different to each member of the family, another baby to the mother, a sister or brother to an only child, a grandchild to the elderly, but for all of us pets provide pleasure and companionship. It has even been suggested that tiny pets should be sent as companions to astronauts on space ships, to help reduce the stress and loneliness of space flights.
　　In this Plastic Age, when most of us live in large cities, pets are particularly important for children. A pet in the family keeps people in touch with the more natural, animal world. Seeing an animal give birth brings understanding of the naturalness of childbirth, and seeing a pet die helps a child to cope³ with sorrow. Learning⁴ to care for a pet helps a child to grow up into a loving adult who feels responsible towards those dependent⁵ on him. Rightly we teach children to be good to their pets. They should learn, too, that pets are good for us human beings.
　　II . Read Read the following passages. Underline the important viewpoints⁶ while reading. 1. An Unmatchable Cat I was sick that winter. It was inconvenient⁷ because my big room was due to be whitewashed⁹. I was put in the little room at the end of the house. The house, nearly but not quite on the top of the hill, always seemed as if it might slide off into the corn fields below. This tiny room had a door, always open, and windows, always open, in spite¹⁰ of the windy cold of a July whose skies were an unending light clear blue. The sky, full of sunshine； the fields, sunlit.
　　But cold, very cold. The cat, a bluish grey Persian, arrived purring on my bed, and settled down to share my sickness, my food, my pillow, my sleep. When I woke in the mornings my face turned to half-frozen sheets； the outside of the fur blanket on the bed was cold； the smell of fresh whitewash⁸ from next door was cold and clean； the wind lifting and laying the dust outside the door was cold-but in the curve¹¹ of my arm, a light purring warmth, the cat, my friend.
　　At the back of the house a wooden tub¹² was set into the earth, outside the bathroom, to catch the bathwater. No pipes carrying water to taps on that farm； water was fetched by ox-drawn cart when it was needed, from the well about two miles away. Through the months of the dry season the only water for the garden was the dirty bathwater. The cat fell into this tub when it was full of hot water.
　　She screamed, was pulled out into a cold wind, washed in permanganate, for the tub was filthy¹³, and held leaves and dust as well as soapy water, was dried and put into my bed to warm. But she grew burning hot with fever. She had pneumonia¹⁴. We gave her what medicine we had in the house, but that was before antibiotics¹⁵, and so she died. For a week she lay in my arm purring, purring,in a rough, trembling little voice that became weaker, then was silent；
　　licked¹⁶ my hand, opened huge green eyes when I called her name and begged her to live； closed them, died, and was thrown into the deep old well-over a hundred feet deep it was-which had gone dry, because the underground water streams had changed their course one year. That was it. Never again. And for years I matched cats in friends' houses, cats in shops, cats on farms, cats in the street, cats on walls, cats in memory, with that gentle, blue-grey purring creature which for me was the cat, the Cat, never to be replaced.
　　And besides, for some years my life did not include extras, unnecessaries, ornaments¹⁷. Cats had no place in an existence spent always moving from place to place, room to room. A cat needs a place as much as it needs a person to make its own. And so it was not until twenty-five years later my life had room for a cat.
　　2. Mother Pays More Attention to Pet Dog Than to Her Young Boy Dear Ann I.anders： I hope you will publish your answer to this letter because there is a family out there that needs help-fast！
　　My friend （I'll call her Krista） married a nice guy in 1978. He's a sales rep on the read most of the time. Krista and Cal had a son five years ago. A nice family unit. About a month after Junior was born, Cal gave Krista a purebred beagle. She    went crazy about the dog and treated him better than the baby.
　　When Junior was old enough to crawl¹⁸, he began to pull the dog's tail and hit him when he thought nobody was looking. Two months ago, Junior began urinating in unexpected¹⁹ and inappropriate places. First, into his mother's shoe, then in her purse, next her jewel box. After he was punished for ruining the jewel box, he found some scissors and cut his mother's string of pearls²⁰.
　　At first Krista attributed²¹ the urinating to Junior's laziness. I told her if it were laziness, he would just wet his pants and not seek special places. Last Christmas Day, it snowed heavily. I called Krista to chat. She sounded breathless. I asked her what she had been doing. “I've been playing outside in the snow with the dog,” was her reply. I asked where Junior was. She replied, “Upstairs, watching television, I guess.” What do you see here, Ann'？ Sign me-A Worried Friend.

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