a touch of perspective

A friend inquired if I find it hard to housesit in places where there are animals since I don't have any pets of my own.
It is a mixed bag to be certain.
I like animals and miss owning my own; it is great to borrow someone else's.
 Plus, who doesn't love cuddling with adorable balls of fur while watching Netflix until the wee hours of the morning?
The flip side is that I have been high on antihistamines for almost 10 days. I'm not allergic to fur on a day-to-day basis, but if there is a critter sleeping on the bed with me (or, you know, four of them) I have to take Claritin to be able to breathe when I wake up.
And litter boxes... enough said, right?
But even when a dog goes missing -he's under the bed pretending that he can't hear you- or a cat steals a sub roll from your plate -this is a different cat than the poptart cat; did they not get the memo about being carnivores- or the sister dogs refuse to go out to pee without each other and one of them doesn't want to go out right this second or a cat wants to play poof fetch for an hour -yes, one of the cats plays fetch like a dog- it doesn't really bother me when I remind myself of this:

Imagine fifteen hundred miles of that.
If that didn't send me over the edge, I doubt anything that happens in the ordinary course of a week of housesitting is going to break me.