Pocket Pig, Studded Collar, Immediate Delivery Please

I’ve always had complicated feelings about pets. Something about the basic premise—taking a creature built for a forest or an ocean or open air and stuffing it into an apartment—struck me as a polite form of cruelty. Dogs leashed to a square meter of garden. Fish circling a tank the size of a shoebox. Parrots repeating your mistakes back at you. The whole arrangement felt off.

This might also be the resentment talking. I never had one. Growing up, the closest thing I got to a pet was a particularly slow grasshopper that I optimistically called mine for about forty-five minutes before it escaped through the window. No dog to run across fields with. No fish to stare at instead of sleeping. No hamster destroying my furniture and then shitting across my floor. Just me, several dying plants, and a lot of unspent affection.

But teacup pigs. I found them via NYLON and apparently they’ve been a thing in England and Spain for years—miniature pigs, small enough to carry under one arm, bred down to an absurd and entirely unjustifiable size. Rupert Grint has one, which is possibly the most compelling argument in their favor. If the kid who played Ron Weasley is on board, how do you say no?

I want one immediately. I want to name it something ridiculous, put a studded leather collar on it, and take it places. I want to be the person who shows up somewhere with a tiny pig on a leash and acts like that’s completely normal. This is a need, not a want. The logistics—where to find one, what to feed it, whether my apartment qualifies as a legally defensible habitat—are details. Secondary. I’ll figure them out after I’ve already committed. On a related note, my plants have started changing color. Responsibility really is everything.