Pets I Have Known

I have been blessed with a life that has almost always known some kind of pet or even more than one.  Here are the ones that I remember:

1.  Peanut.  A black and white kitty that was my first cat.  I don't remember much about him because I was awfully young.  I think I was five years old when he passed away.

2.  Girl.  Not my pet, but Dad's hunting dog that he had for awhile.  I remember when she had a litter of puppies in the basement:  I was fascinated!  I even remember the names of two of them:  Rusty and Maggie.

3.  Dingbat.  Definitely not my pet.  This was Mom's cat from back before she had children.  Dingbat was definitely unhappy with the new additions to the family.

4.  Snowball.  Mom and Dad took me to the pound to pick out a kitten, after Peanut died.  Out of all of the kittens I could have picked, I chose the one that hid from me.  He was the orneriest, most grouchy cat I have ever known, but was very devoted to Mom and would even show me some flashes of affection.  He had feline leukemia, but survived many years past what he was supposed to.

5.  Captain.  Another white cat, this one was my brother's.  I have a vague recollection that my uncle brought him over.  I'm not sure if that's accurate, though.

6.  Wickitt.  My first dog, a Pekingese, that I got when I was 11.  This was the year that we moved to the country.  It took me a long time to fit in at school, and Wickitt was my most loyal friend.  Yes, he was named because as a puppy, he had a striking resemblance to an ewok.  See, I was a geek even back then.

7.  Spunky.  My brother's first dog.  She was part basset, and was a heck of a good dog.  She loved to roughhouse and play in the mud with the boys, and could be counted on to be in the thick of everything.

8.  Prince.  My first horse!  We got him shortly after moving to the country.  He took advantage of our ignorance in the beginning, but didn't have a mean bone in his body.  After I learned more about making a horse obey, he was a great horse, and fun to ride.

9.  Cody.  My second horse.  I went to Colorado to help my aunt on her ranch one summer.  She gave me Cody, to take home.  He was the first horse that I showed in the 4-H.  He was very tall, at 18 1/2 hands high.  Quite a tall horse for such a short girl, but I managed!

10.  Billy Bob.  I hesitate to call him a pet - menace more like.  He was a goat with curling horns.  We didn't have him for very long, because of his penchant for slamming people with those horns.

11.  Ducks.  We had our very own flock of ducks for awhile, before coyotes and snapping turtles ate them all, the bastards.  They were a lot of fun.  It was especially hilarious when the two that we'd named, Paul and Silas, mated and laid eggs together.  Not sure where that fits into your theology, but it's kind of twisted....

12.  Pal.  My brother's first horse, a palomino.  He was a sweet boy, but very old.  He had bad teeth, and so was very skinny.  He died the first winter that we had him.

13.  Shawnee.  My brother's second horse, an Appaloosa mare.  She gave birth to a filly, Patches.  A very pretty horse, though she did not endear herself to me when she stepped on my foot and broke my two little toes.

14.  Twenty -Nine.  My third horse, also given to me by my aunt when I went out to visit her for a month one summer.  She was a registered AQHA mare.  I showed her in the 4-H as well.  She was a lot of fun to ride - just spirited enough that she would prance and run fast when I wanted her to, but not so spirited that I couldn't control her.

15.  Susie.  A little black cat that we adopted from a local farmer.  She was a little ball of fluff, and was always sure that she was really meant to be a housecat.  (She was an outdoor cat back then.)  She made the move to college with me, and stayed with me in my apartment for a couple of years.  I had to give her back to my parents when I moved to Boston, something that grieved me over the years.  She lived a good long life with them, though,  surviving until she was about 18 years old.

16.  Wendy.  Susie's littermate.  Wendy was a sweet cat.  I remember that she and Susie both had kittens at the same time out at the farm.  That was a great time, with lots of little kitties running around!

17.  Boots.  We managed to get rid of all of the kittens except for one, Boots, who stayed at the farm.  She was a wild one - half feral, much more at home in the woods and fields than in the house.

18.  Pigs.  I can't believe that I forgot pigs!  My brother and I each got a runt from one of the neighbors.  We named them Zakk and James (after Zakk Wylde and James Hetfield - I'm sure that those two would be HONORED to know that we named our pigs after them, LOL.)  We had to bottle feed them a lot in the beginning.  We ended up giving them to a pig farm because as we found out the hard way, we're not really cut out to be pig farmers.