The little pet

I don't know what he is, but he's alive and he's my pet -- along with a vast menagerie of other pets. He is so small and so fragile (maybe an inch and a half long), I have him in my hand to keep him safe and warm while I'm tending to the needs of everything else. There are mice, rats, dogs, and other animals all loose around the main compartments where they're all usually kept. The animals are loose while I'm trying to clean and feed and fix things, but it's taking too long because I only have one hand. The little pet keeps getting more and more hurt as I try to tend to all these emergencies. There's no time to even yell out for help; it's all happening too fast to stop it from happening.

First the little pet almost drowned as I'm trying to save a couple of other animals from drowning after they wandered somewhere they weren't supposed to go. He was immersed in the water just momentarily but he's so tiny that he just can't survive these things. Now he's gasping for breath and soaking wet and cold in my hand. He's limp and his eyes are closed but he's still breathing. Then something falls and I must catch it and I realize it's a weight of some sort and after I quickly lift it off this little thing, he's able to take in a deep breath again but I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he's dying and will not live. He's gone through too much to be able to survive.

I'm sobbing while trying desperately to keep him warm and dry, and I keep thinking -- if only I can get the rest of this under control somehow, I'll be able to tend to him directly. But since I've got him in my one hand, I can't adequately attend to anything else either. Both things require two hands and total concentration -- and both are equally as important. If I tend to him alone, the rest of the menagerie will get completely out of control and will be impossible to recover from; If I don't keep him in at least one of my hands, he will die from the elements. Both situations as just as important, and yet I'm failing miserably at both simply because I only have two hands.