to my green friend

i am sitting here quietly reflecting where my life would have ended up without IggySingh, and i come to the realization (yet again)... not in a very good place. sure: i would still be a successful, contributing member to earning fees; growing the business; meeting clients on their home ground so travel and more international travel; still paying my own bills and standing on my own 2 feet. but away from all the professional related realms, i would have continued on to become cold, uncaring, growingly impatient with children, overly focused on work... unforgiving, saving every positive vibe for my profession so i could be affiliative with people of work. and to hell with the rest of the world.

instead :) i wake up every morning really happy now, from the inside out; knowing that in just under 2 hours HRHIggySingh will be up too, and she will start waking up by uncurling her long tail, opening her sleepy eyes, yawning and soliciting a hide + seek game. IggySingh is most 'manja' (affectionate) when she first wakes up btw. she generally wants to just lie in (under her cushions), snuggle up to your hand petting her gently behind her ears (tympanums actually as they are known); and she will close her eyes for as long as she can get away with it, giving you little iguana kisses to encourage you to keep on petting her. and when madam's had enough, up comes her hind leg to swat your hand away. sigh.

and i love that IggySingh is MY priority over and above everything and anything else in my life (job included!) and that i can say this with complete faith and confidence and still look the world right in its face. today, as i look forward to living my 39th year, i no longer worry about all the noise that used to live in my head. the constant worrying questions that haunted me day and night. questions others asked me, questions i repeated like an idiot: am i doing the best i really can for IggySingh? is she really happy - sitting in her cage, waiting and waiting for me to come home as a full day's work creeps on? would she be happier somewhere else, climbing trees and hiding in the very top of them, free?

i know now without a shadow of a doubt that HRH IggySingh is exactly where she needs to be! and that just as i get useless and miserable and find it really hard to get out from under my blankets when she is gone, she would be equally miserable, and will in addition get very very sick - tried and tested for just 17 days in February 2006. an incident that left Iggy without her nose, lips, teeth. in addition she came back with gout, respiratory problems, the loss of her hind legs, swollen limbs. and i DETEST that "reputable" director-cum-vet that i hold personally responsible, sitting out there in his ugly small-minded office in the taiping zoo. today, after a year and then some, of heart breaking small steps: IggySingh is finally back to eating on her own, walking, running, climbing, bobbing her head, jumping between the couches, giving a rare occasional crocodile role, and leaving more of her deep claw marks into my already tortured wrists...

IggySingh is a "pet" and as such is my "home grown" baby, all 4.5 feet of her. and one should never make the mistake of ever thinking a pet will readjust to a "wilder" environment, simply because it is still wild at heart. or that our pets will be happier outside in a wilder environment, just because they started out wild. when you are in fact, everything your pet has ever known. my bad. for listening to my family and my friends, that i love btw. but fellow humans that do not know a thing about green iguanas. let alone exotics. you think a green iguana really equates to a "common" iguana??! get real! and fast! now, let's reflect on this: if even a zoo with supposedly renowned vets can almost kill an animal, in a safe-enough-outside-environment what more the awful urban legends i have heard about iguana keepers releasing their pets into the tropical foliage we have in Malaysia? leaving them to survive or die in degrees?

or yet other Malaysians that abandon their cats and dogs and/or their unwanted litters out onto the unfriendly, uncaring and at times extremely cruel streets of our country? no no no. a pet is a pet, and is YOUR pet for life. my personal lesson learnt. and now, i am finally, blissfully, happy, and i am finally guiltless. IggySingh is where she should be. with me. full stop!

~from Su, forever your human slave~