Jerome smiled amusedly as he listened to Pam talking about her gift behaviour, nodding along with a soft widening grin, finding himself thinking how adorable this was, and how totally not surprising at all. The sappy side of his heart definitely loved hearing all about her enthusiastic joy about her husband, wishing for her that she would be able to reunite with him at some point. The more he got to know about the man, the realer got the reality of a happy marriage being torn apart by those assholes, which kind of disturbed the happy picture Jerome was painting in his head. Not enough to affect his current mood, though, as he still had a content expression on his face. "I definitely understand the sentiment. I guess sometimes I was more excited about my children's or Mariella's birthday than they were." He chuckled softly, not even realizing that he had become so comfortable with Pam that he had slipped the name of his wife, which he hadn't done before at all. "Though I never needed to send my gifts away in order to hold off.", he added teasingly, displaying an amicable grin.
"But for real, your marriage sounds wonderful." His face softened up again, his finger concentrating on Gardenia, who apparently had been officially named a minute ago, before the topic shifted. He only nodded approvingly to Pam's words about the scary things, still not wanting to drag the mood by indulging in annoying topics like that, but also not wanting to dismiss her thoughts. "It sure is.", he added silently.
He tilted his head slightly as she continued, his glance shimmering with a little surprise at the mention of her sister messing up with her bird. "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Well, we definitely make sure that Gardenia won't get tied up in something dangerous." He shifted his gaze to the bird again, which he admittedly had already started to get attached to a little. "So I guess your sister is not as good with animals as you are?"
He laughed at her next question, grinning slightly again. "Well, he apparently wasn't as much an animal person as he thought. He probably just wanted to compete with his sister. I kind of saw this outcome from the start, but I wanted him to make this experience by himself, otherwise he would have continued to feel treated unfairly. He still had to take care of the birds because I wanted to teach him that pets are no toys, and that we couldn't just give them away because he was bored of them, but eventually, we compromised that my daughter would take care of the birds when he would continue cleaning the cage. He was rather relieved and the relationship to his sister improved because he didn't feel treated unfairly anymore and understood that her pets are not only me making her presents, but also her very own passion he just didn't quite share as much." Jerome couldn't stop himself from rambling on and on about this incident, and his eyes lit up during this tale.