OUR PETS!

With the family pet taking over the blog world here lately, I thought maybe I'd chime in on the subject. I am not an animal lover. I love the zoo. I love to look at photos of other's pets. I am as moved as the next person by the sight of a cute puppy, but I am not keen on the whole idea of animals living in my home! Thus said, we have had a multitude of animals pass through our home, some stayed for long periods of time, others did not. We do not have a history of choosing very appropriate pets. For instance Rocky, the puppy Jeff brought home from the grocery store that had paws the size of basketballs. Did I mention we had two children and were living in a 600 sq. ft. condo at the time. I believe now, it perhaps was some sort of Rotweiller mix. Definitely not the best choice for a family with limited space and limited dog-food funds!

We have a history of owning neurotic pets as well. There is some debate as to whether we just have the uncanny ability to pick pets with congenital neuroses, or whether we drive them to it. Either way, it makes life more interesting than I care to have it. There was our first pet... an adorable (or so we thought!)kitten named Clo. She would squirm under the doors, pounce on us in our sleep, and not in a kind way! She once clawed her way out of the house through a screen door, and she pooped in my plants! There was the older, calmer Cocker-Spaniel, Blondie, who daily burrowed under our neighbors home, barking and in time sending her cats to the psychiatrist! The golden retriever, Molly, who simply showed up one day. She could scale our six-foot fence in one neat leap, liked to pilfer through the neighborhood garbage cans and was constantly bringing back beer cans which she distributed about our front yard. She also tormented the maillady to the extent that we were contacted three times by the post office. There was the hamster, Casey, who could have escaped from Alcatraz! He showed up anywhere, anytime, and resembled a rat just a bit too much for my taste. There was the goldfish, Goldie (original huh?) who would not die, despite my wishes and prayers. The kid's decided after about two days that a fish was really not a very fun pet, which suited me fine since I know they are precarious creatures and can turn up at the top of the fishbowl in the wink of an eye. Better not to get too attached! Wrong, this fish thrived, living just to dirty his fishbowl for over a year! These are just a few examples!

I do have one lingering pet regret! We had a cat... Tomite Thomas Jefferson Graves (named by his formal owner, Christian of course!) I do believe Tomite had more neuroses than any of the other pets. He would nip at your heel if you were even a minute late with his chow! He once pooped in the toilet. I kid you not! One time I had about 15 ladies from church over for a fellowship. The evening was progressing nicely when I heard a gasp from the kitchen. Tomite was on the stove with his head in a pot of chowder! He moved from California to Indiana, traveling over 2,000 miles in the car with us, and was suprisingly well-behaved actually. I loved to complain about him, but deep down, I really did love him. During a summer Bible study in our home, I would try to send him home with our guests each week. One week, much to my suprise, one lady took me up on my offer, and before I knew it she was the new owner of our cat. I didn't really want to give him away, and looking back I should have told her right out that I had just been kidding. After he was gone, I sat on the couch and cried. I think I was more attached than I admitted!


We now own two pets. We have an indoor cat, Lucy. She occasionally wakes Christian up by wetting on him, leaves me disgusting coughed-up hairballs on my kitchen floor, poops next to the litterbox, rather than in it, and grooms herself loud enough to be heard across the house! Then there is our dog, Calli. She is adorable and really quite obedient. However, her breath could be used to create weapons of mass destruction, she regularly hones her toenails to razor-sharpness, she barks at every leaf that blows by, she'd rather dismantle her doghouse and sit in the overturned roof than inside the house, and she digs holes large enough to disappear into.


What's not to love about pets?