my pets are my children

above is a clip of me, my greyhound (pearl) and my min pin (rusty) playing. just so you know... i had just been running around with them so i sound a little out of breath and i also make a gun shooting sound to egg her on. rusty, as you can see, likes to try to keep up.

i will whole heartedly admit that i am one of those people that considers her pets to be hairy four-legged children. i love my pets very much and i can't imagine my life without them. if you frequently read my blog, you know just how much i love animals and that is usually animals that i don't own. the ones that i do own... well, lets just say that it borders on the fanatical.

i have had pets all of my life. my first pet was Andy, a tortoiseshell cat. her name is short for Andromeda. clash of the titans had just come and my mom liked the guy that played Perseus. harry something i think. he also did that show la law. remember? then later andy had kittens and we had emily. i named her but i don't remember why i liked the name emily. she had kittens and emily and the kittens disappeared. one day they were here... next day they were gone. give me a break here... i was 6 at the time. then we had a dog named sasha. that lasted a couple of months. we took her to a friend that had lots of land that sasha could run around in. (note: as much as we want to think that kids and dogs go well together... they really don't. i see it all the time at the dog park. the kids get freaked out, start running. the dogs thinks its a game and chase the child. the child goes into hysterics and everyone is upset. kids are ready for dogs when they are taller than the dog. even then... that rule applies to your dog not anyone elses. no children at the dog park. despite how much it makes me laugh to see the terrorized kids... it's just bad all the way around.) then a few years later my mom and i got eggroll. he was MY cat. a siamese mix, cross-eyed and wonderful. we would play hide and go seek and hide the eggroll in the basket. i loved that cat soooooo much when i was 10 he got the tip of his tail stuck in something and broke it so after that he had a jaunty little hook in his tail. he pawed my face once when we were playing and his claw scratched my eyelid. it almost hit my eye. i was screaming and he was scared that he was in trouble but it was an accident. eggroll died of pancreatic cancer. i was away at college in england. i was very upset. but before that, my mom got kira. another siamese mix... crazy as a loon. kira had endometriosis and used to drive us nuts with the yowelling. but then we got her fixed and she chilled out (kinda, she is still nuts) Andy died of old age. i was in my twenties when it happened. andy was like 18 or 19 years old when it happened. made me sad but she had a great life. when i was in college out in west texas, i found a stray and named him bill. i loved bill. he was named for the cat in the bloom county comic strip. bill was fugly when i brought him home. he was sick with an upper respiratory infection and his fur was stuck out in odd directions. my wonderful, tolerant roommate, Bear, let me keep him. bill was about the size of a large apple when i found him. now he is a whopping 20ish pound cat. he is huge. half main coon and half ragdoll cat. and he is pretty now too. when i moved to england for the year that i did my apprenticeship, my mom took him in. she had just gotten a new cat named bryner, named after yul bryner from the king and i as the cat was another siamese mix. bryner looks like marlin brando if you ask me. so my mom now had kira, bryner and now bill. and i had nothing. about 3 years ago,i worked at a vet clinic and fostered a kitten that had been hit by a car and had to have it's lag amputated. i named her clover but she never answered to it. one day i called her peapie and she started answering to that so the name peapie stuck. she is calico and my beautiful girl. she can really get around on those three legs! she rules the roost and keeps the dogs in line.

as for dogs... we have The Black Pearl. she's neigh uncatchable. her race name was caz's daisy. that's a dumb name so i changed it. we got her from the racing dog rescue project and she is a blessing. when we got her, we lived in a one bedroom apt. for being as big as she is... she takes up very little room (except in the bed. i have often been kicked out of the bed by the dog because she's so big). she won 3 out of 7 races before breaking he leg on the track. it was never set as they were going to put her down but he race dog rescue people swooped in and saved her. now she has a bit of a gimp in that leg but as you can see she runs just fine. she is lovable, gentle and playful. she likes to take her toys out of her toy box and puts them on her bed in the bedroom. we don't know why but its cute. then for christmas this year, i got himself a miniature pincher. that dog got a lot of personality. Rusty is our watchdog, bodyguard and legwarmer. he loves to cuddle under the blankets and sleep in the crook of my legs behind my knees. he barks at the pond at our apt complex because a turtle scared him once and now he feels that he should give the pond a piece of his mind at every opportunity. frogs are his enemy and he thinks that he is the biggest dog in the dog park-- taking on pits, dobies, rotties, and great danes. he even has a spiked collar.

rounding out our pets are peanut and mr ages. mr ages is a parakeet that has yet to learn to talk but we are working on it. and peanut is our blind white mouse. she is up on the entertainment center to stay out of the predators way. here are some pics of my non-human family.

this is Bill on my last visit home. he is doing what he does best... getting into something that he shouldn't.

here is pearl in here favorite spot on the couch. she usually sleeps with her eyes and mouth open. she looks like special ed fred in this pic.

this is peanut. she is blind which is common for albino mice. she spends most of her time either in her wheel or sleeping in her coconut hut.

Rusty, here, is wanting to invite the ducks for dinner. he stands on his back legs a lot. its pretty to watch.

meet mr ages. he is named for the mouse in the secret of nimh. he likes to watch the birds from the window and to keep a running commentary of the shenanigans of the mammals

this is my peapie. isn't she a cutey. you may have seen her before as i have featured her on my blog in the past.

here is pearl and rusty in the dog yard at my apt complex. they play very well together and are the darlings of the complex. most of the other dogs love having play dates with them.

once, i tried to make a dog sweater for a friend. i tried it on peapie to see how it looked. she gave me the bitch face and didn't speak to me for a week afterwards

peapie wants to go out on the lanni and rusty wants to eat mr ages.

this is boomer. we owned him for a year but he was not the right dog for us. he was very loving to people but wanted to eat other dogs. he was a corgie-pitt bull mix. yeah, weird. but he was given a wonderful home with a really nice lady and he is much happier with her.

this is peapie, the first week i brought her home to be fostered. she still had stitches and she hated that cone but it was funny as hell to look at.