Wicked Wednesday–Pets

On Wicked Wednesdays we will all chime in on an answer to a question. Feel free to respond in the comments!

Are you a pet person?

Sherry:  We didn’t have pets growing up, unless you count a few goldfish and a turtle or two when we were very young. As an adult a couple of cats wandered in and out of my life, Snoopy the white Persian and Lucy, a beautiful, grey and white cat, that moved from neighbor to neighbor. Seven years ago we got Lily, our West Highland Terrier. I was always afraid of dogs growing up. But Lily has changed my outlook on dogs, when you look into the eyes of a dog you always see a soul.

Jessie: For me, it depends a great deal on the pet. I love birds. An African Grey parrot named Miss Kim was a part of my family for many years. Even though she’s been gone more than 5 years, I still find myself calling out goodbye to her almost every time I leave the house. Now I have a fish tank in my office with a black moor named Bulge and a mystery snail named Highsmith. I am allergic to most dogs and worry about a cat getting run over in the street so we have neither of those. I plan to convince my husband we need a worm compositor. Do those count as pets?

Barb: I grew up with a family dog, a medium-sized mutt named Tiger who followed my father home from the park when I was in kindergarten. She lived until I was a senior in college, so played a huge part in my childhood.

When my kids were six and three, my sister-in-law gave us a golden retriever puppy as a gift. My husband was off working on a presidential campaign and I was essentially a single mother that year. I was furious, but what are you going to do when your kids are absolutely in love? When my sister-in-law got older and had kids and pets of her own, she apologized about a million times to me. But my kids got to grow up with a dog, just as I had, so it all worked out.

The golden retriever, Jessie, died when my daughter was in middle school and my son a junior in high school. I was adamant about not getting another dog, but inevitably I caved and an eight rescue month-old cocker spaniel, MacKenzie became part of our household. Of course, everything I predicted came true. The kids went off to college. My husband and I were left running home from work to walk the dog. And still I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything.

Now I have only a grand-dog, Fiver, and that’s enough for me!

Julie: I have had cats in my life since I was about five. But there has only been one dog, a wonderful golden retriever named Geoff. Never anything more exotic than that, though I brought hamsters and guinea pigs home from school for the weekend a few times. My mother never warmed to them.

Edith: As I descried in my post on Monday, I currently have three cats. But I barely had pets growing up. Once we had two kitties, Punkie and Blondie, but the story went that one ran away and the other died of cat fever. We had fish for a few years and I learned all about neon tetras. But that was it. I think my father was allergic, and my mother had her hands full raising four children all less than two years apart.

As an adult I had a housemate with a golden retriever once and watched her do a really nice job training him, but that’s the extent of my dog experience, although Sherry’s Lily is a very sweet dog, as is Liz’s Shaggy. Jessie, a worm farm would count as hundreds of pets! But I doubt you could identify them clearly enough to name them.

Liz: I always loved animals, but my experience with them as a kid was limited. My parents weren’t really pet people. I had some fish, and used to try to take them everywhere with me. As a result, I ended up accidentally pouring them into the toilet. The next batch was, um, slightly overfed. I think that was the end of the fish. I remember getting a dog when I was about five, and then my parents took it back to a shelter shortly thereafter. I don’t remember the details, but remember being really sad about it. We got another dog when I   was sixteen, and he lived with my family until he passed away at eleven.  

So of course when I moved out on my own, I had to have pets. I had never had cats before, and quickly adopted two of them. Then, one day a few years later, my mother found a litter of kittens on the side of the road. I found homes for two of them, and kept the other two. A year later, I began volunteering at a shelter and, well, the rest is history. Three dogs and too many cats later, I wouldn’t trade them for the world. But if I could make them get jobs, I totally would.

What about our readers? Are you pet people?