Pet Meme

First, so many hugs and thanks to all you wonderful ladies for encouraging me after my last post. I'm no longer quite on a pity-party wagon, so that's good! I realize that there is purpose in all things, and this diagnosis has come at a time and point in which I was not motivating myself to be healthy and so now my hand is being forced, so to speak. But truly, thank you for kind words and virtual hugs; they made me feel so much better!

Tonggu Momma tagged me in a fun little meme, and since I love pets, I'm more than willing to oblige! (However, TM, I have to make one minor little correction: I most assuredly am a dog person, and yes we do own 2 cats, but we also own 2 dogs. I just don't have reason to talk about the dogs as much, because Leos cats are just much more interesting to talk about! In my defense, I married into Mia the Siamese's family, and after we got rid of Hunny's dog, I thought since he's a weird cat lover guy cat person he'd like a cat, but Phineas adopted me instead. Take that, Hunny! I'm sure it's just because I'm a Leo, after all.)


1. What is the first pet you remember?
The first animal I have memories of is my mom's cat Bart, whose name was originally Little Fart, until she got pregnant with my brother and realized that may not be the most appropriate name. In keeping with the same sounds, he was Little Bart, and then just Bart. He was a Russian Blue, which if you've never seen a real one, they are kind of odd looking. Very aquiline facial features and extraordinarily large ears. He lived til I was 14, so we pretty much grew up together.

2. How many different kinds of pets have you owned?
Growing up, we lived "out in the country" (although I think Hunny disagrees with my assessment of "country"), and we had at various points, dogs (too many to count), cats, birds, rabbits, goats, chickens, a pig, and we cow-sat once. So that's 7 species. Wow.

3. What was your strangest pet?
I personally have never had a strange pet, so I'll speak for my sister K instead... When one of our goats had a kid (haha, pun totally intended), she fell in love with it, and the feeling was entirely mutual. Sweet P (It was originally "Pea" til we found out she was a he) would literally follow her everywhere... even tried getting on the school bus a few times. We sang K--- had a little goat all the time. He came in the house and everything.

4. What is your dream pet?
I'd love to raise alpacas, but I'm not sure if that is like owning a pet. There's just something about a dog wanting to be petted that endears the term "pet" to me.

5. What is your nightmare pet?
Tarantulas. I'm going to encourage my boys to love nature as best as I can, but I really don't want them to want a pet spider. I couldn't handle it. I'd rather feed lizards little mice and crickets than have to stare at a hairy, multi-eyed beast. Shiver. For the record, I also think fish have got to be the most boring creatures.

6.Your best/ funniest pet story...
When Hunny and I had only been dating a short while, I wanted him to meet my spiritual mom and dad. Anyway, about a week before we were to visit them, I spontaneously got a yellow lab mix puppy. I'd also just baked Hunny a birthday cake, his favorite-Red Velvet. This was one of the best from-scratch cakes I'd ever made, and I wanted to take a piece to Meg to share the goodness and keep it from going stale while we were away. I grabbed one of those plastic take-away canisters from the coffee shop I worked at, filled it with a huuuuge slice of cake, and off to Atlanta we drove with Pele in the back seat. At one of our gas-filling stops, I got out of the car to stretch and grab some goodies, and I let Pele out of her crate but kept her in the car. Needless to say, when I got back to walk her around, there was no cake left, and believe-you-me, this thing was as large as she was! She ate every last bite of cake, and this will be totally gross, but her BMs were a startling shade of scarlet for the duration of our stay!! Now when we look at Pele, Hunny and I muse that that piece of cake was only as big as her head is now.... they grow so fast!

7. Tell your worst/ saddest pet story...
This one still ticks me off. My first dog was Pepe (sorry, I have a thing for P names), and he was a black toy poodle. I got him when I was in 8th grade. He was supposed to be my mom's dog, but I went to get him with my dad, and I think we just bonded. He slept with me every night til I went away to college. While in college, my relationship with my parents went very downhill, and my mom didn't tell me that Pepe got sick, and they put him down while I was on an overseas mission trip without telling me. It still makes me so sad that I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.
On a much lighter note, this is bad but pretty funny. My friend KP is from Northern Ireland, and when we were in college and she was going back home for Christmas vacation, she asked me to watch her pet fish Henry. Mind you, this was the 5th fish in a semester called Henry, so in my humble opinion, she was not the best fish owner ever. Hurrumph. Anyway, so I grabbed Henry's bowl and as I was saying goodbye to a couple of friends while waiting for my boyfriend to come pick me up and take me home, I set Henry on the roof of a car. After watching Top Gun for the first time in my life (I was only 19, only 13 years too late) with said boyfriend, I asked him what he did with Henry, and he said uh, nothing... Knowing that one of my friends was still in her dorm, I called to ask if she saw the bowl sitting on a car in the parking lot, but she didn't. I never did find out what happened to him... until we got back from break (yes, I was honest with KP and let her know I lost her fish). She worked in the mail room and actually overheard some guys talking about the fish that they found on some one's car in X parking lot, and it had frozen to death! I was so sad she had to hear it like that!!! The reason this story is funny is because just a few months later, the same friend I called to ask if she saw Henry and KP and I all lived together for the summer in yet another dorm. KP had graduated to a beta called Florida, and one day D called an exterminator to our room to get rid of some ants. Thinking the fumes would kill Florida, she set him in the open windowsill in the closet--in July.... he kind of boiled. So, in the words of Robert Frost, Some fish think the world will end in fire, and some in ice!! KP has never asked any of us to watch her fish ever again. In fact, I think she quit trying to own them after that!!

8. Did you ever have a scary animal experience?
I can't think of anything particularly scary.

9. What was your favorite pet?
As much as I loved Pepe, Pele is my favorite dog hands-down. She is just so laid back and kind of goofy. And now that she's used to little ones, she's a champ with the babies. She truly is the best dog ever. And this is completely superficial, but I love her name* so much, and it will make me sad when she goes because you can't just name another dog the same name!! (*her name is pronounced pay-lay, and I got it from a Tori Amos album, boys for pele. Apparently Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of fire or volcanoes and she'd take little boys for sacrifices. Kind of macabre, eh?! However, Hunny being the soccer fanatic that he is, doesn't mind the futbol reference himself!)

10. What did you really want to tell us about pets that didn't fit into the other questions?
I do not get cats... at all. They are sometimes downright mean, don't want affection (except occasionally on THEIR terms), and yet, I've grown to love Mia and Phineas. I mostly like Mia because she's beautiful, but Phineas is alright because he was such a cute kitten and now will jump into my lap, though goodness knows why because I throw him right back off of me more times than not!! Also, this is pretty random, but I used to be a purebred snob, and now I'm totally against this because of the inbreeding and mass-production it usually elicits. I will only go the route of shelters or very reputable breeders in the future.

The four I'm tagging are Melanie (because I know they've had some weird pets), Brownie (because I'm interested in what her answers will be!), Biz (again, because I'm curious how she'll answer the questions), and Kellie (because she strikes me as an uber-cat person [note I did not say crazy cat lady!] although I could see a yippy little dog as well!).