Meow? Woof? Tweet? Oink?

[taurusmoon]

Welcome to the newly created pets forum. I'm not sure that anyone really wants this one, but we'll see if there's any interest.

To help us plan for the development of this forum, please take the poll above and let us know what domestic critters comprise your extended household.

Enjoy.

Sara
Bracing herself for the flood

[Grouch]

Three children: the trick with the Grouchettes is to keep them well-supplied with food and water; they take care of their own grooming. Oh, and remember to keep their litter box clean (i.e., plunge their toilet when necessary, because they can't do it on their own).

Two cats: Doodle and Mozart. Doodle, female, is older by about 18 months...she's "my" cat (translation: Mrs. Grouch would kick her out into the cold without a moment's hesitation were I to die or be otherwise incapacitated). Mozart, male, is afraid of me. I once stepped on his tail with my big, clunky Army boots. He's never gotten over that trauma.

Don't ask me what breeds they are, I have no clue. They're long-haired mutts.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

yay pet forum pet forum yay!


I listed my husband under "other" because he fits most definitions of animals (eats with his paws, hairy, smelly, untamed). Farm animals was a tempting category though.


Buffy the Cat Who Ate Cleveland and Astro the Magical Mystery Cat are very happy they can participate in the EA community.



mj
ps you could have named this forum "the paws that refreshes," hahaha

Four cats, their profiles and stories available at:
http://users2.ev1.net/~file13/

I may even post some of my cat stories such as "The Blanket Monster" to Easily Addictive if folks want to see silliness in action. (or inaction)

[jnbmoore]

There's Misel a/k/a the brainless wonder -- lab/setter mix and subject of his own epinion on how stupid he is :-)

There's Shiou Bai the street cat done good. She was found by my roommates walking the streets of Linkou Taiwan with her eyes still closed. She's been mine ever since (had her longer than I have had hubby)

Monkey girl really isn't a kid (surprise surprise) and is a 3 3/4 year old going on 16

Bridgette

[kurt_messick]

I have had birds, fish and dogs in the past. But at present I am being kept by four cats.

Paul
Mommy Cat
Prancer
Silver

[Joubert[$]]

Three cats (two Tonkinese - Sassy and Boo and a tough-as-hell tabby named Dexter), a Belgian shepherd named Bradley who should have dubbed Whiny SirBarksalot and a whole bunch of fish that are two small to eat.

Oh yeah, and the kids.


I spend a lot of time at work.

[taurusmoon]

We are currently down to 2 cats (Tasha, a Russian Blue mix and Marmalade, I bet you can figure out what he looks like) and a couple of plecos that are scheduled for adoption sometime next month.

I've been fortunate to share my home with quite a few critters in the last few years including one psychotic dog, several budgies, a tankful of fish (including the notorious Mr. Greenfishy), countless frogs and lizards, one screwy wabbit, several odd hamsters and gerbils, hermit crabs --- lets' see, have I forgotten anything? -- oh yeah, and a teenager.

Did I ever mention that I live in a rather small apartment?

Sara
Who obviously has the word sucker printed on her forehead

[jenninca]

Where's the button for "None, but would really like one?"

My family has had cats in the past, and I am a definite cat person. I'm getting close to sure that I'd like to try to find one for myself after the holidays.

Cindy

[murasaki]

I am the lowly acolyte who serves the goddess-cats, Kushi and Neko-chan. They are twins, all black, four and a half years old and also know as fiends from hell. Or my familiars. Or the incestuous lesbians (lots of mutual--ahem!--grooming).

Of course, I adore them and they know enough to suck up to me to keep the food coming.

I've had dogs and cats in childhood, a rat in college (surreptitiously since I lived in the dorm), and various boyfriends but I haven't kept any of them.

--naomi
who will one day have the guts to answer the phone "The Cattery" just for the shock value.

[nicholmere]

Yay! Pet Forum! :thumbs:

When we moved to our home in the spring time a few years ago we had no pets. Then one August weekend a cat came to call. Beautiful, long hair, greys and whites, sweet temperment, friendly, and very very hungry. Hubby gave her some tuna fish and she's been our buddy ever since. We named her Penny.

Turned out Penny was pregnant when she found us. A month after her arrival we watched her give birth to four kittens. There was no way we could be parted from them so we kept them all. We're not sure how old Penny is - a rough guess is between 4 -5 years. Her kittens turned three years this last September.

Gemma - born first - smallest of the group (8 1/2 lbs) short haired, black and white - will attack for table scraps.

Clarice - born second - SUPER SIZED monster cat (13.2 lbs!) long haired, black and white - the most cuddliest ball of fluff you could ever lift up - loves to be brushed. Clarice doesn't meow, she says "ick ick" and "squeak squeak".

Otto - born third - Alpha Male (12.5 lbs) Medium haired tabby of browns and blacks with some gold and orange - very handsome if I do say so myself. Nicknamed Pee Boy because he pees where he shouldn't. Also Nicknamed Inspector Otto because he has to examine everything and everybody that enters the house, he does rounds every night to make sure everything and everyone is in place before he goes to bed.

Paris - Born fourth - Cuddle Male (10.2 lbs) Short haired tabby with silver and black markings. Visitors cannot tell Otto and Paris apart unless the two are sitting side by side. Paris doesn't meow either he says "woo woo". He loves to be held and cuddled and will follow you around until you pick him up. He can't stand people food except for my cereal bowl when he thinks I'm not looking.

I know how much they all weigh because they were at the vets today for their annual check-up. We are going to put Otto and Paris (cause he sometimes copies Otto's bad peeing habits) on PROZAC! Apparently it helps .... we'll see!

New to our home in the last month is Newton- another stray. He'd been hanging around outside off and on for over a year. We finally decided to trap him and take him to the vets where we had him snipped and chipped. He's a short haired grey and white male (thought he was female all last year and called him Gloria ... oops). The vet estimates that Newton is probably a couple of years old.

So six cats and one toddler

Originally posted by nicholmere

Clarice - born second - SUPER SIZED monster cat (13.2 lbs!) long haired, black and white - the most cuddliest ball of fluff you could ever lift up - loves to be brushed. Clarice doesn't meow, she says "ick ick" and "squeak squeak". [/b]

I wonder what that makes our Edloe cat... she's 22 pounds right now, ultra-shaggy long hair, too. HUMONGOUS SIZED?

[pluckyduck]

Reggie would be extremely insulted that I checked the "dog" box. He's a poodle and heaven knows, , poodles haven't a clue that they are dogs.

I've been proud owner (actually "mother") to 7 dogs in my life, and Reggie is the very first one who is a royal pain in my ass. Coincidently, , he happens to be my first male dog. Go figure.

I had to have a poodle this go round because my allergies were out of control. Poodles, the breed I was raised with, are one of the few breeds who allergic folk can own. The male dogs from the particular litter were $400 and the female dogs were $700. Even though I went in wanting a female, I came out with a male. Last time! The very last time!

He rules the home and Don treats him like King. I tolerate him. ( ) Of course, even though Don waits on him hand and foot, I'm Reggie's primary love since I'm his Mama. (Poodles tend to bond with just one person. Reggie's an exceptionally social poodle -- the vet said so! -- but I'm still his favorite.)

Rotten dog.



Andrea

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Originally posted by nicholmere

Clarice - born second - SUPER SIZED monster cat (13.2 lbs!)

My Baby Buffy was 23.5lbs, but he's been on diet cat food for almost three years now. He's down to about 20lbs and has no personality any more. All he does is cry for food, it's quite pathetic. If it weren't that the weight would kill him (10+ years old and has a heart murmur), I'd let him be fat and happy.

mj

[mtbat]

Two cats-Jezz is the elderly lady, I've had her for 14 years. she was an abandoned baby more or less-I adore her-she is part wildcat with the most incredible green eyes. she is grey and white semi-longhaired

Meowlth(yes like the pokemon) is my daughter's cat-but he seems to have developed a fondness for my feet-I can't sit around for 5 mintues before there he is, chewing and biting my poor feet. He sleeps with my daughter. he is the perfect kids pet, he allows himself to be mauled, dragged around the house and cuddled constantly. He is a black and white semi-longhair

Max-the DUMB A** DOG who recently cost us $47 to bail his butt out of doggie jail after he ran off while on a walk/run with my husband. he is a mutt we got at a puppy rescue, deff. part Aust. Shepard-but who the heck knows what else!

The Fish-a blue betta fish that plays dead-he just floats near the top, or near the bottom-weird weird fish-he's blue and red and purple.

Two Kids-one 7 and one not quite 2

ONe Kitty MIA-Marquis-my baby! he got out and got lost a few months ago-he was the kitty who always slept under the covers with me~

[Psychovant]

Wow, I'm the only one so far with farm animals? E-I-E-I-O. Ready? ...

Doggie clan -
Themis Anasazi Roo - named after a Greek goddess (a daughter of Zues) and has all those moves down, mind you. She is an Australian Cattle dog (red heeler) and quite the handful.

Abbie Fits Blu - err, we named her Abbie to have a "normal" name in the house, Fits is after Ella Fitzgerald, and Blu refers to the fact that she is considerd a blue heeler.

Cajun - Based on the fact that we have two Alpha females Cajun was an attempt to calm the household down and try to stop the two girls from gutting each other. To our absolute delight, it worked, they love him almost as much as we do and he has turned out to be the best "mutt" (1/2 Australian Cattle dog and 1/2 Australian Sheperd) I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. He is a sweetie.

Kitty clan -
Speck - (the purring orb) used to be a wee lass but with a thyroid condition has grown rather orb-like with a wicked purr and the incredible ability to warm your entire lap.

Grigley Munster - named after one of my first skateboards, literally, he is a big ole fluffy beasty that loves everyone in the household (birds included, although they attack him whenever possible) and the last of my original kitty clan.

Piddy the Newt Whompass - Speck's nemesis, the Pid was a sickly thing when my partner got her and nursed her back to the living. As a result she is a bit slow and can stare for hours at nothing on the walls and/or ceiling.

Winged clan -
Mayday - was given to us when I managed a pet shop by a gentleman who was diagnosed with AIDS. Birds carry with them a host of problems for those with AIDS and Mayday, who loved his papa somethin' fierce, for some reason took to me whenever the two of them came in to the store. He is a wee lovebird with the heart of an eagle.

Crash - My partner's bird and slowly becomming the bane of my existance. My bird Eli, passed a few years ago and Crash has been close to inconsolable since. He is a beautiful sun conure that we can only assume doesn't think we are a good enough substitution for Eli to.

Goat clan -
We have five goats (was to be only 2 but they stayed with a friend of ours at his "love farm" and we now have 5). Jezzabelle and Mayzee are the oldest and our babies, we have held them since they were 3 days old. Go-Go and Gertrude are Jezzabelle's kids and we have held them just as much although they aren't as in to us as their mom's are. Chance is the son of Jezzy and Mayzee's mom and how he came to us is a loooong story. Suffice it to say that we saved his life and maybe, in another thread, I'll tell his story.

We also have assorted fishy-swimmies, frog-type beings, and various animals in the wild that come back every year. Some even allow us to get up close and personal, like the momma robin who returns every year and allows us to climb up and take a peek at her babies. She never fusses and actually last year called us out of the house when one of the babies fell out of the nest and was being stalked by a neighbor's cat.

Yikes, might one call this a ramble? I'll stop now and give a hardy applause to Taurasmoon for giving all of us an outlet to gush about our cherished furry, winged, cloven, and slobbery friends.

Shannon

[magenta321]

Well, I knew I couldn't vote twice, so I picked "other", but really I have a cat and a dog.

Orph -- short for Orphan, is my cat who is.... um like 14 years old. We call him "heart murmor cat" sometimes, usually when he is being traumatized. It goes something like "Hey! Leave my poor heart murmor cat alone!" I worry about him often. He's overweight, but not like you guyses kitties. My cat looks scrawny when he gets a bath, so I think he's not as fat as he looks.

Frasier is my mutt-dog. He is the replacement of Foxy, a Foxhound. I tell you, don't ever buy hounds. Anyhoo, Fraiser is 100% more obedient than Foxy was, and he actually cares if he hurts me, or does something bad. Foxy didn't. Except farting. If Foxy farted and you said "poo!" she'd get very embarrassed. We try to shame this dog, but he could care less.

Frasier is also eternally happy. Sometimes it gets truly annoying. He's not one of those dumb happy dogs. Most happy dogs are dumb. Frasier is super intelligent. He is currently learning how to play hide and seek. I lock him in the basement for a moment, hide his toys, and tell him to "find it" and he does. He also fetches the newspaper, rolls over, gives you five, will give you his paw and switch it if you ask him to. Umm... we never could even teach Foxy to lay down. Unless she felt like it.

I've had a lot of pets in my day. Three goldfish (who all died the day I brought them home), lots of cats (Muffy and Tuffy, Nick, and now Orph), two dogs (Foxy then Frasier) and a pig, Herman.

Herman was my most interesting pet. See, even if you don't have a dog, you know what the pleasures and pains of dog ownership entail. People don't understand about raising pigs till they have one. Mine was a Vietnamese Pot-Bellied pig, bought at the very onset of that craze (I had one before Luke Perry of 90210).

Pigs eat pig food and you need alfalfa hay for them, so you have to find an Agway to shop at. The pot-bellies are supposed to stay small, but they don't. People want to feed them scraps. I think you do that with a farm pig, cause you want to eat them. You don't do that with a miniature pig on tiny legs, because once they get fat enough, they can't walk. My pig got too fat to climb stairs, but could still walk. We were strict with his diet too.

Pigs are very intelligent, but even more beligerant. They make awful noises when they want something and you are ignoring them (like when they want a second breakfast). They don't like heat. They don't like cold. They like to burrow but don't like to be dirty.

Now that I've owned one, I realize that it's not right to have one. It's actually very cruel, but what can you do when you already own it? You can't kill it. Selling it to someone else won't help, they prolly won't take care of it as well. You can't send it back to Vietnam, cause it wouldn't survive.

Owning a pot- belly was like taking an exotic plant that only grows in the desert, and planting it in your back yard in Upstate New York. In the end, my piggy who was supposed to live 20 years lived about 7 and died a sad death. We let him out of the house for a feeding and to go potty in the middle of winter. It was snowing, so he went into his kennel and climbed into his dog house. He never ate his dinner. We couldn't convice him to come out of the house. He was beligerant, so we thought little of it. We tried our best, and then figured that if he wanted to stay in a dog house over night than to walk through some snow back into the house, that was his decision. The next morning when I went to check on him, he was making the death rattle noise, but was still alive. He had blood coming out of his nose. We broke the dog house apart to get him out, and my mother and I somehow lifted him onto a sled and tried to get him into the car to go to the vet. By the time we got him to my car, he was already dead. It was a sad, sad day. My dad left work to come home and dig the frozen ground to bury his "little buddy." We all still feel immense guilt, but I can't explain it. There is nothing you can do with a pig who doesn't want to do what you want him to do.

Don't buy pot-bellies no matter how cute they are. Make sure your friends don't either. They really aren't meant to be domesticated, especially not here. Maybe they could survive in Vietnam being domesticated, but here, it's just cruel.

[sylvanb]

Shannon, I hope you live waaay out in the country

Margaret, you CAN vote twice. At least, I did. I think. I mean, I checked two things on one vote. Cats and fish. Should have checked birds, too -- we spend more on bird seed than on cat food, and it seems to be working because we have a big crop of birds in the back yard.

The three cats seem like a herd to me, especially when they come charging in for dinner, but a bunch of you have us beat. They are as follows:

Widget was a "free" -- hahahah -- pound kitty who sucked up to me, literally, when we had already chosen another. Sadly, he tested positive for FeLuk and had to be put down but Widget thrives. She is a dainty little calico who likes to snuggle under my chin and wash my face, but she turns into a windmill of knives if she doesn't want to be held.

Toby and Tucker, the Catt Brothers, were adopted as grown-ups by my daughter Maryana, who quickly discovered she wasn't up to their demands.

Tucker is a love, smokey gray and playful, very talkative. If he wants something -- in or out or a game of "string," he WILL NOT SHUT UP until he gets it.

Toby is the huge one, but also the timid one. However, he has started beating up on Widget, who thinks she is alpha, which is usually amiable and pretty funny to watch. Toby is white with gray splotches and a pink nose, and has the gift of transmigration. Whenever there is food to be had, he magically materializes.

They are all domestic shorthairs, and thrive here because David is home all day to keep them company and let them in and out and in and out and in and out.........

The fish are your basic tropicals in a 15 gallon tank. The only one with a name is Hoover the catfish. I always name my catfish Hoover. I am about to replace the bushynose pleco who is responsible for keeping the algae down; they don't seem to live very long, even with driftwood and pellets and all the algae anyone could possibly desire.

The backyard birds are transitioning from goldfinches to slate-colored juncoes, with a whole lot of doves and a steady stream of other interesting sorts. If anyone wants to know how to keep the skwirls from eating all the bird seed, just ask.

That's enough for now. Where is the photo album?? (I am not ready for that but love to look at other people's cats).

[Redlass]

We currently have two cats: Gandalf the Gray (a Russian Blue mix with extra digits on all four of his paws) and Itty Bitty (a long-haired mix who has my husband wrapped around her paw). Before we had a child, we had two other cats: Solitaire and Cinco. They decided to take up residence elsewhere to protest our bringing a baby into the home. Alas, they left no forwarding address.