It’s been a year now since I started spending most of my time inside my house rather than going to work, the grocery store and other places (though not many; I was already a homebody). Last year at this time, I was still reconciling with the fact that the next day I wouldn’t be going in to the office for two weeks (the plan at the time). The time to return kept getting postponed as covid-19 spread, and it’s now been a year of me working from home (except for a couple of days when my home Internet was out; that was weird). Most of us won’t be back in the newsroom till we’re all fully vaccinated, and some of us are hoping we can still work at home at least part of the time. Some people (mostly introverts like me) didn’t mind the lockdown so much, at least for the first few months. When the introverts start missing people, it’s dragged on too long.

But what about the pets? They’ve spent so much time with us over the past year, they probably won’t know what to do with themselves, though cats are probably most eager for their humans to get out of their house during the day because they’re interrupting valuable sleep time. Dogs won’t know what they did wrong to make their humans stop spending all day with them. Animals adopted during the pandemic who’ve only known the lockdown life will be confused and probably suffer from separation anxiety.

Here’s to the light at the end of the tunnel and the approach of hilarity with confused pets.