Other people's pets - r. l. maizes

Maizess Other Peoples Pets examines the gap between the families were born into and those we create, and the danger that holding on to a troubled past may rob us of the future.

La La Fine relates to animals better than she does to other people.

Abandoned by a mother who never wanted a family, raised by a locksmith-turned-thief father, La La looks to pets when it feels like the rest of the world conspires against her.

La Las world stops being whole when her mother, who never wanted a child, abandons her twice.

First, when La La falls through thin ice on a skating trip, and again when the accusations of unfit mother feel too close to true.

Left alone with her father--a locksmith by trade, and a thief in reality--La La is denied a regular life.

She becomes her fathers accomplice, calming the watchdog while he strips families of their most precious belongings.

When her fathers luck runs out and he is arrested for burglary, everything La La has painstakingly built unravels.

In her fourth year of veterinary school, she is forced to drop out, leaving school to pay for her fathers legal fees the only way she knows how--robbing homes once again.

As an animal empath, she rationalizes her theft by focusing on houses with pets whose maladies only she can sense and caring for them before leaving with the familys valuables.

The news reports a puzzled police force--searching for a thief who left behind medicine for the dog, water for the parrot, or food for the hamster.

Desperate to compensate for new and old losses, La La continues to rob homes, but its a strategy that ultimately will fail her.