Our Other "Kids"

We share our home - and everything in it - with our three cats and two dogs.

I got MamaCat as a kitten, in July, 1995. In March 1997, she gave birth to four kittens. I kept two, BoyCat and GirlCat, and gave the other two to mysister.

Of my sister's two, one insisted on being an outdoor cat, and used up his nine lives much too quickly, but his siblings were all content with a life lived safely indoors, and will turn 10 later this month.

MamaCat will be 12 in May, but is the "kitten-y-est" of them all, still playing "bed mouse" on a regular basis.

PerfectPup and her three sisters were left in the emergency drop-off yard at a Humane Society about three hours from us. We spotted her on PetFinders.com, made a call and picked her up that weekend. She is the smartest, most beautiful dog ever. She never really did all that pain-in-the-ass puppy stuff, was basically potty trained when we got her, didn't chew things up and doesn't jump on people (yeah, that would be the hip dysplasia). Her only fault is that she's not so great at coming when called, but other than that she really is about perfect.

We got BigGaloot in June 2006, at the age of 8 weeks and he is, um, not so perfect. He's what we get for being so cocky about what great puppy parents we were, based on PerfectPup's behavior.

Shrike had been convinced for months that "PerfectPup wants a puppy." (A much different situation from "Shrike wants a puppy," you see.)

Finally, I decided that since about 99.999% of the stuff we do is my idea, the least I could do was let her get a dog. She'd found a two-year-old at a local shelter that she was interested in, so we went to check him out.

He turned out to be way bigger than PerfectPup, wasn't so great at walking on leash, and had gotten out of the fenced yard the day before.

Yeah, not our dog.

"Well," says the kid working there, "we do have a puppy. Would you like to see him?"

I said "Sure, show us the puppy," knowing damn well that what I was really saying was "Sure, we'll take the puppy!"

Damn those puppies and their infernal cuteness!

Nine months later, BigGaloot is way bigger than PerfectPup, was a nightmare on-leash until we bought him a no-pull harness, and has gotten out of the yard a couple of times.

Yep, that's our dog.

While visiting my family in Texas at Christmas, we were talking about our baby plans, and my mom said "How will you keep BigGaloot from eating the baby?"

We admitted that it is a concern that we have, but we're hoping he'll have settled down more by then. (He is much better than even a couple of months ago.)

She said, "You should take him to visit a friend who has a baby. Then, when he eats theirs, you should fuss at him. Alot.""My+Mama+Said" Pets Photos