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Christmas Meme #6
Dec. 8th, 2019 04:23Pets (for Lilith)
Pets - we're currently living somewhere I like a lot EXCEPT for its 'no pet' policy. Otherwise, I have always had a pet or pets. I grew up with cats and my mother's dreadful little dog (she had a thing for dreadful little dogs, she had one in the last years of her life too). Once I married there were cats - only remember having a single one right at the end, Mulder-last-cat, who absolutely loved being an only child, I had no idea Jake had suppressed him as much as we started suspecting he did. Jake was the flower child cat with the no kill policy - it still seems so strange.
At heart, I'm a little more of a dog person but dogs weren't a thing till we moved into a house. Love, love retrievers, but the best dogs we have had were full-on mongrels, the kind the vet can't identify. There was Purdy, who looked a bit like a wolfhound (she was huge, skinny, and dead ugly) who was the most intelligent dog I've known, who herded the neighbour's lost puppy into our yard and then came to call me, who taught herself to retrieve in water by watching the thick-as-two-short-planks blond labrador simply not get it --- Husband never forgave her, the (expensive) lab was his, she was mine! That story has a sad end, so... moving along.
And there was Paddy. Paddy was with us for 16 years, from the age of 5 or 6 weeks --- took him off a well-meaning circle of teenagers who were convinced he was a Husky (um). He arrived in a cardboard box with an old pillow and a can of cat food and I swore he was going to the SPCA next day... you see how that worked, yes. Slept in and then on that box till it fell apart, loved his pillow, stole cat food regularly.... He never did anything exceptional or brilliant, he was an average size, average clever, not much of a guard dog, but that was okay, he was my dog and I loved him so much. He's been gone a couple of years now and it still hurts sufficiently that even before we moved here I hadn't thought of getting another dog.
And for a while we looked after M's Staffie, Sasha, otherwise known as the Best Little Staffie in the World. Four people crying in the vet's surgery the day she crossed the Rainbow Bridge (poor baby girl had Cushings, still made eight good years). Pretty girl with the sweetest nature if you weren't a dog larger than her. In that case, all bets were off.
We've also had:
rats (love rats, such intelligent, affectionate little people).
various mice
hamsters
budgies
canaries
ducks (oh god, a flock of Muscovy ducks is a frightening thing to share space with, the one guy used to come sit on the bottom half of the stable door of the kitchen and WATCH me - they're like geese, just stupid!).
rabbits (this was a mistake)
a chicken named Winnie after Ma Winnie Mandela, on the basis that she knew no fear and could not be intimidated - she stole a mouse from one of the cats once and walked round the yard with it impaled on her beak, stopping every so often to bash its head against the ground.
various fish, mainly tropical.
Best cat was Scrapcat. Relative showed up with her in a box around Christmas, they'd been chasing the feral cats at the factory out of the machinery and he'd accidentally caught her. She was pitch black. She got sort of tame because she was young, definitely no more than 9 weeks, though she'd vanish for days at a time for no good reason and would go down to the end of the garden if we had guests (hated strangers). The other cats disliked her - she smelled funny and was a smarter hunter than them. Okay, maybe Fudge was marginally better. Fudge was the household Alpha, part Abyssinian and affectionate in a dog-like way. Loved you to throw paper balls for her. Even trained the corner cafe owner to do it and she'd bring them home. Professional mouser, that one.
I need to stop, this is getting long enough to put behind a cut (if it isn't already). Thank you for putting up with me rambling, it was nice to just sit and think about them all. Sad but -- ehh, I've been blessed with so many good memories. Did not even mention Tessa, my FiL's dog who lived with us for a while, or the time the two top cats (who did not like each other) teamed up and chased a bewildered Rottweiler...
Pets - we're currently living somewhere I like a lot EXCEPT for its 'no pet' policy. Otherwise, I have always had a pet or pets. I grew up with cats and my mother's dreadful little dog (she had a thing for dreadful little dogs, she had one in the last years of her life too). Once I married there were cats - only remember having a single one right at the end, Mulder-last-cat, who absolutely loved being an only child, I had no idea Jake had suppressed him as much as we started suspecting he did. Jake was the flower child cat with the no kill policy - it still seems so strange.
At heart, I'm a little more of a dog person but dogs weren't a thing till we moved into a house. Love, love retrievers, but the best dogs we have had were full-on mongrels, the kind the vet can't identify. There was Purdy, who looked a bit like a wolfhound (she was huge, skinny, and dead ugly) who was the most intelligent dog I've known, who herded the neighbour's lost puppy into our yard and then came to call me, who taught herself to retrieve in water by watching the thick-as-two-short-planks blond labrador simply not get it --- Husband never forgave her, the (expensive) lab was his, she was mine! That story has a sad end, so... moving along.
And there was Paddy. Paddy was with us for 16 years, from the age of 5 or 6 weeks --- took him off a well-meaning circle of teenagers who were convinced he was a Husky (um). He arrived in a cardboard box with an old pillow and a can of cat food and I swore he was going to the SPCA next day... you see how that worked, yes. Slept in and then on that box till it fell apart, loved his pillow, stole cat food regularly.... He never did anything exceptional or brilliant, he was an average size, average clever, not much of a guard dog, but that was okay, he was my dog and I loved him so much. He's been gone a couple of years now and it still hurts sufficiently that even before we moved here I hadn't thought of getting another dog.
And for a while we looked after M's Staffie, Sasha, otherwise known as the Best Little Staffie in the World. Four people crying in the vet's surgery the day she crossed the Rainbow Bridge (poor baby girl had Cushings, still made eight good years). Pretty girl with the sweetest nature if you weren't a dog larger than her. In that case, all bets were off.
We've also had:
rats (love rats, such intelligent, affectionate little people).
various mice
hamsters
budgies
canaries
ducks (oh god, a flock of Muscovy ducks is a frightening thing to share space with, the one guy used to come sit on the bottom half of the stable door of the kitchen and WATCH me - they're like geese, just stupid!).
rabbits (this was a mistake)
a chicken named Winnie after Ma Winnie Mandela, on the basis that she knew no fear and could not be intimidated - she stole a mouse from one of the cats once and walked round the yard with it impaled on her beak, stopping every so often to bash its head against the ground.
various fish, mainly tropical.
Best cat was Scrapcat. Relative showed up with her in a box around Christmas, they'd been chasing the feral cats at the factory out of the machinery and he'd accidentally caught her. She was pitch black. She got sort of tame because she was young, definitely no more than 9 weeks, though she'd vanish for days at a time for no good reason and would go down to the end of the garden if we had guests (hated strangers). The other cats disliked her - she smelled funny and was a smarter hunter than them. Okay, maybe Fudge was marginally better. Fudge was the household Alpha, part Abyssinian and affectionate in a dog-like way. Loved you to throw paper balls for her. Even trained the corner cafe owner to do it and she'd bring them home. Professional mouser, that one.
I need to stop, this is getting long enough to put behind a cut (if it isn't already). Thank you for putting up with me rambling, it was nice to just sit and think about them all. Sad but -- ehh, I've been blessed with so many good memories. Did not even mention Tessa, my FiL's dog who lived with us for a while, or the time the two top cats (who did not like each other) teamed up and chased a bewildered Rottweiler...
