certainly is burdensome, but very rewarding at the same time. You make sacrifices but they alter life for the better, at least in my experience

birdeye21

What have you learned from owning a pet?

1. That you have to let beings be. You can't change them. You can't fix them. They just are.
2. Adding dependents is burdensome.

Before we lost our cat, she influenced a lot of our life decisions. Where we lived (did she have a way to get in/out on her own) and how much we travelled (we owe her attention, are we just going to take that from her randomly).

I'm not sure (1) is only due to having a pet, but it's microcosm of any human relationship. She wanted to be outside even though she'd war with other cats and was hypersensitive to Texas mosquitos to the point where she'd lose all the hair on her nose and around her eyes.