Your pets and you

[SeaCat]

How do you view your pets? How do you treat them? Are your pets part of your family or are they something you can jetison as want and desire command?

I think you can figure out how I view my pets.

They are a part of my family and they are treated with the love and respect of any other member of the family.

I know many people in real life who have ditched their pets at a moments notice because it was convenient for them to do so. (My brother is one of these.)

So how do you view them? Why?

Cat

 

[knitedreams]

My cat is a part of my family. I got him while away at college because my family was 3000 miles away and I was lonely. When I went back home for Christmas break, he would go with me. Finally, when it was time for me to come back home permanently, I took him with me.

Recently, I got him a little sister who's fast becoming an invaluable member of the family! I know that my future isn't at home, but when I do leave, the cats are coming with!

 

[BlackShanglan]

The SO and I were just discussing the case of a dog we knew of whose owners dropped it off at the breed rescue at the age of six because they'd decided to start a family. We were a bit shocked and couldn't imagine making that decision. I do understand that animals play a different role in other people's lives, and that we're more emotionally and socially involved with our pets than most people are. Still, it seemed like such a wretched thing. It's not a long-lived breed; ten years is a blessing if you get it. At six, the dog is already heading into its late middle age, and suddenly it's lost its home.

We lost our first dog to cancer when she was six years and three months of age. We'd have done anything for her to have had a few more years of happy life. It's hard to see someone just throw that away. Thank goodness, the SO and I are of one mind on the topic of the pets. It was some relief to know that we wholly understood each other, and it still is to be able to talk about her to each other.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I cant recall who said it, but someone claims you can recognize a person's religion from how they treat their pets. I believe them.

 

[3113]

We found our cat on the street; she was dehydrated and half-starved, dirty scratched up...and according to the vet we took her to, she wasn't wild. She'd been raised in someone's house as a baby and handled by people. Which meant someone had abandoned her She was just under a year old. A week after we'd adopted her, it was like she'd always been with us. Within a month, her scratches were gone, she was muscular and sleek, her fur silky soft and thick...she was stunningly beautiful! We'd adopted Cinderella it seemed, and we just could not believe that anyone would have abandoned her.

That was twelve years ago. When I say she's my familiar, I mean it. She doesn't allow anyone to pick her up but us, doesn't notice, purr, nuzzle or meow for anyone else. Part of the family doesn't begin to cover it--she'll herd us to bed if we stay up too late...or stay up with us. She hangs with us when we're sick, or sad, purring and licking us. Sometimes I swear, there's telepathy going on. She's a cat, certainly, though and through, but she's one of us.

I wouldn't say she's part of our family. I'd say that we're part of her "pride."

 

[cloudy]

Two years ago one of our horses died, and I was absolutely heartbroken, even though I knew it was coming. He'd been well taken care of since we bought him at the age of 7. He was 27 when he died, and lived longer than most. We were riding him regularly until the last year or so - he foundered and we had to stop riding him - but until then, he was just as lively and ready to go as he was the day we got him.

I still miss the old bugger. He was one of the best horses I've ever had.

That's how I think of my pets.

 

[buxxxom]

We have two 80 lb. "lap dogs" that we got by default when their original owners moved to Singapore. When we got them, they'd been raised in an urban environment, kept inside all the time except when allowed outside on a leash for exercise and bathroom purposes. We live in a very rural area, with many acres for them to safely explore, and it's been fun to see them adapt to their "dogginess." The first time they ran flat out, tongues wagging, I swear it was like watching poetry. Still, at the end of the day, they come inside to sleep at the foot of the bed. I can forgive them, our canine childran, the shedding, muddy pawprints, etc just as I forgive my human children the spills of kool-aid and glue.

 

[neonlyte]

I'm owned by a cat. I don't think he's ever forgiven me for giving him a girl's name. I do get the occassional mouse, frog or bird as a reward for being patient.

 

[TheHotJD]

I have two cats who are family to me. They're littermates who have been with me since they were kittens, and they turned seven years old today. We have always taken care of each other. I keep them healthy and happy, and they bring me so much joy in return.

I really do try not to be judgemental, but I'm afraid I have an energetic contempt for those people who bring pets into their lives on a whim only to abandon them very casually later at a moment's notice, once taking care of them becomes inconvenient.

 

[AngeloMichael]

I had two dogs, a Keeshond named Chase and a Pomeranian named Ciccio. I had them for eight years and both dogs meant the world to me but Chase was my baby. I never had a bond stronger with an animal than I had with her.

In November of 2005 I had gone in for surgery and suffered complications. I had a wound that would not heal and that severely limited my mobility and ability to care for my dogs. Also, my family, which is my usual support network whenever I need help, was going through a very difficult time. In addition to this, I was right in the middle of having to move out of my home.

I was extremely stressed and was very worried about my ability to care for my dogs in my new home. I was going from a place with a fenced in yard to a place that did not have a fence or allow them. Although my new landlord knew I had the dogs and permitted them, I became increasingly afraid I would not be able to care for them in my situation.

I learned that if Chase ever had to be given over to a shelter, she would be euthanized because she had epilepsy. Above all else, I did not want that to happen. I did some research into Keeshond Rescue and found someone to help me. She was wonderful and instrumental in helping me find a new home not only for Chase, but for my Pomeranian as well.

She brought over one of her rescued Kees, a boy named Noah, he was the sweetest and most well behaved dogs I ever met. She told me he was found in an abandoned apartment, the former tenants had left him locked in the bathroom and he wasn't found until a few weeks later. All the water in the the toilet was gone and he was emaciated and dehydrated. I couldn't believe how anyone could do that to such a beautiful and loving dog, it made my heart ache, but I was glad he had been rescued and doing so well now. I'd love to lock up the kind of people who do this sort of thing and let them starve to near death and see how they like it...but I digress.

Anyway, I completed the move and got settled in and I also got expert help in getting healed and rehabilitated.

I kept in contact with the rescue worker and was assured both my dogs were happy and well cared for in their new homes, and I found some solace in that, but still, the pain of their absence had not and still has not lessened over time. I can’t describe how much I miss them, especially Chase.

If I had been in a better frame of mind, or just had more knowledge of how things were going to be once I got here, maybe I could have just found someone to foster them for a couple months and then I could have resumed caring for them. But alas, I had signed them over and couldn't get them back, no matter how much I would like to and I'm not allowed the contact information of the new people looking after them, I can only get reports from the rescuer.

Anyhow, last February I finally decided it was time to get a new dog. I felt guilty about moving on, but I needed something in my life. I found another Keeshond (this has been my favorite breed all my life) she was almost 3 months old when I adopted her. I named her Winter but call her Winnie most of the time, and she has become a huge part of my life. I don't know what I did to deserve being blessed once again with a wonderful pet and companion. She loves to cuddle and play, and is extremely smart, she knows her toys by name and retrieves them when asked to, She loves to take a dumbell shaped toy and bat her balls around with it like a golf player, and she uses her feet to play with her balls like a soccer player.

I still think about Chase and Ciccio every day, but having Winter has helped soothe my soul an incredible amount.

Here is Winter when I first got her:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/Drawkcabi/000_0359.jpg

Here is what she looks like now:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/Drawkcabi/Winnie1.jpg

 

[scheherazade_79]

All the dogs I've had have always been family. Their needs and feelings were always taken into consideration when planning something, and they even got wrapped gifts at Christmas and on birthdays, and sent other family members gifts of their own.

And they had varied diets instead of dry / tinned dog food day in, day out - usually having their own plateful of whatever the rest of the family was eating.

And they got to go on the furniture

And God help any stranger who aimed a kick at them or anything while we were out on a walk...

 

[starrkers]

I am owned by five cats and a small dog. They only allow me bed space because of my opposable thumbs (they can't work the can opener).

 

[Liar]

My cat is my roommate and on-and-off best friend. We don't have to love each other every day, but we like each others' company, respect each others' privacy and wishes, and share the household chores. Mine are laundry, cooking, cleaning and doing the díshes. Hers is sleeping in windows.

 

[Guest]

I've posted about our kitties at various times.

At present we have six inside cats - two elderly and four much younger that were rescued strays. They are family. The momma kitty has adopted young son, she sleeps in his bed, watches over him, keeps an ear open for his adventures. She's very good. One of her sons has adopted our daughter. He follows her around the house like a puppy and curls up on her bed next to her when she's on her computer.

The number tends to fluctuate, as we occasionally adopt an outside kitty to the pride or lose one of our oldest to sickness or age.

The cats can access outside via a kennel that is attached to a basement window but they cannot roam. It's for their safety.

We also feed several outside cats, they come morning and night to say hello. They want to be petted as much as eat, as sometimes they'll wait until we talk to them by name (our kids have named them all) and stroke their fur before they dig into the canned goodies. We always wash up after petting them so as not to bring any possible sickness into our houseful.

Our next door neighbors have a sweet dog that they ignore. She is in decent health, but lonely. She's a pit bull mix.

We have named her, too. And we give her a chew treat every day. She waits at the fence and wags her tail and is so damn happy to see us. We call her "Good Dog!" After she gets the treat she'll run a circle around the yard and come back to the fence for a pat. She does that two or three times before she settles down to eat. Nice pup. Rotten neighbors.

We leave food out for other critters too, birds and squirrels and apparently a family of raccoons.

Animals are living creatures. Simple decency insists we treat them with care.

But the love they easily give back to us is worth so much more, isn't it?

I cannot imagine a house without a pet. How - empty it must be.

 

[EmeraldKitten]

My mom is a lover of animals. Her motto is, 'Don't ever get an animal unless you plan on keeping it until it dies. There's no reason to trick one into having a family, then getting rid of it. It'll be like adopting a child.'
Not one time did we ever get an animal we didn't keep until it passed.
Right now, she has a poodle that turned 15 this year. He's old and feeble, lol. He's going blind, and he's having kidney problems from taking Phenobarbital his whole life to control his epilepsy. Due to the kidney issues, he wets himself, for lack of a better phrase.
So my mom has been making him diapers for the last few months.
Whats funny about that, is that if he wets his diaper in the middle of the night, he wakes her up. I don't know what's worse- that he does it, or the fact she gets up and changes it, LOL.
I keep telling her he's on his last leg and she should probably put him down, but the vet assures her that other than being stiff from his arthritis, he's in no pain. And he still has a pretty peppy personality.

My boyfriend and I currently have two hamsters and two cats.
One of the cats is a Blue Point Himalayan.
The other is one we 'resuced' about a month ago. One of our friends works at a vet's office, and another girl that worked there found him on the side of the road. His face was scuffed up, and his back leg was scraped to the bone. They think someone threw him out a car window. He's an orange tabby, and now that his boo-boo's are healed, he's a pretty groovy kitten. He's only about 4 or 5 months old.

So these cats are our lifetime commitment.
(Two cats my mom had growing up lived to be 22 and 26. Two cats I had growing up lived to be 17 and 18, both had to be put to sleep last year.)
I'm just glad my boyfriend grew up with a mom that loves animals. So he isn't opposed to me wanting to be a crazy cat lady, lol.

I'm attaching one of Winston.
He always looks so pissed off. It's his smush face, lol.

 

[tickledkitty]

Our two Siberian huskies were definitely part of the family. They had the most wonderful personalities, each one distinctly different. I always felt that they had a very good understanding of our family and what was going on, maybe even more so than we humans. Sure, there were inconvenient things about them (shedding!!), but none of us would have ever thought to get rid of them. Aren't we all inconvenient once in a while?

 

[Recidiva]

We have two dogs and three cats. We never "decided" to get an animal, an animal just decided to need us and we couldn't say no. We've developed an ability to say no after...the last animal. Five is enough.

My husband rescued a Spitz-Chow-Alaskan puppy named Jazz. Jazz had any number of fungal and skin infections. Jazz is elderly now, barks if the grass moves, hates men (except for those in our family) and has seizures. Caring for him is fairly intensive as he needs daily medication and regular blood tests. We're saving up to get his teeth addressed, he's got a bit of decay. Bringing him into the vet last month ran us about $500 just for prescriptions and blood work. Mouth surgery will probably run another $700.

Sinta is a kitty we thought was a catbird. We heard cries for a day before my son looked through the fence to next door and pulled a kitten through. Small enough to hold in the palm of our hands, we took her in. She's a pain and likes to pee on every surface in the home, this behavior started after we adopted our third kitty, and they've escalated the competitive pee-fest to them both being confined to the garage, where everything's encased in plastic now and covered with towels to accomodate their chosen pastime.

Shadow was a little kitty who hid underneath the wheels of my car so I couldn't drive anywhere without fear of squashing her. She kept doing that until I took her in. Me standing on the other side of the screen door holding a teeny kitten. Me nodding yes. Husband nodding no. He eventually nodded yes. As a kitten she'd get so tripped up in your feet, we nearly killed her or ourselves often trying to avoid squashing her. She will not allow a piece of meat to go unchallenged, and sometimes you'll find a spare pork chop from the smell, as she'd wrangled the whole thing back to some lair and let it rot. She is the sweetest cat I've ever met. Gentle, kind, and will come over to rub up against your legs and pet you, though she often doesn't want return pets, she'll run away. She adores the kids and watches after them. My son can roll around with her on the floor and has figured out all manner of kitty language from this sweet lady. She can hardly meow, it's more like a very soft squeak or croak.

Logan is a 100 pound Rottweiler-Chow blend who was adopted because my husband had a friend who was going to probably put him to sleep. They just couldn't handle him. We took him sight unseen, and if we'd seen him first, we probably wouldn't have...he's a monster. He's very aggressive, very unpredictable, has drawn blood on humans several times out of protective guarding behavior. We coughed up about $1200 to get him to go to a guard dog training school, and he's been the sweetest thing since. Okay, so we have a crate for him that we have to put him into whenever someone attempts to visit. He's a very protective leonine presence. I haven't been afraid of home intruders since he's come to stay with us.

The final addition was Nicey (I decided my son should be able to name one of the animals, named so 'cause he's so nice). He's a little undernourished, permanently small kitty that was in a cage at a pet store marked "Free." One of the employees brought him in. I was appalled because in the midst of a pet store...this cat was exhausted, dopey, looked ill, and nobody had bothered to give him food or water. I made the mistake of picking him up, and I couldn't put him back down. They told me "she" was a female. She was a boy. He's the noisiest, neediest cat in history, unfortunately due to his peeing arms race, also confined away from humans. I carry him out of there to hang out on my lap. If he's allowed out, he HAS to be in my lap. He won't let me sleep if he's allowed in the bedroom. I've never been the target of more bitching in my life. He will meow nonstop for attention no matter what, unless he's asleep.

These guys needed us, they're family. We have no more room and we've decided not to adopt more. But...we've done that EVERY time previously also. We'll see how it goes, but I don't think there's any more space. There's always more room in our hearts than our home.

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

I've had various stages of love for my pets. I care for all of them, but some just really bury themselves in your heart and when you lose them, you lose a piece of yourself.

Currently we have two new birds. They came into our lives a couple days ago. They are the older two kids' pets. The girls are getting attached which is good, since it is their responsibility. I don't believe I'd get attached to these two, simply because I am not in charge of their care. The birds need to bond with the girls not me.

I had two cockatiels and one was very dear to me, the other not, but I did morn for both when they eventually died, one year apart from each other.

I loved my dog, Puppy Pete and was with him when the vet had to put him down. I cared for the dog Toast, but we had to get rid of him because he bit my daughter and drew blood. We found him a home with a woman that didn't have kids and he's very happy living near a lake with her and her other dogs.

My son wants a lizard, so that will be the next critter that graces our home. For myself... I miss my cats, which our new landlords made us get rid of.

 

[AngeloMichael]

I cannot imagine a house without a pet. How - empty it must be.

You have no idea how right you are. My new house wasn't a "home" until I got my dog Winter. It's funny, a human can inhabbit a house for years and still not feel it's exactly theirs, but bring a pet in and make it a member of the family and soon you realize you're still not living in your home, you're living in theirs.

 

[ms.read]

oh how I wish, How I WISH I could have a pet to love and adore once again, just thinking about it makes my eyes water. I used to have a cat, her name is lucky and she was lucky to be alive because the farmer my mom got her from was going to drown the whole litter. (She saved them all by the way).

I also used to have a hypoallergenic dog named Taco ( she was from puerto rico) we got her from the aspca. The cat and the dog became best friends.
I moved out into an apartment where i was not alowwed to have pets, so Taco and Lucky stayed with my mom. That Christmas, i found out i have developed a sever allergy to cat dander. So now I cant even be around my child hood pet....

This thread makes me so happy because all these animals are getting so much love.

Taco is a riot i think there is some whippit in her blood , becasue sjhe runs so fast and can do it for miles.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

We've had several cats come and go through this house. The first one was a menace, and I viewed her as more of a nemesis than a family member or a pet (I was three to five and she clawed at me often).

Our next set of cats were all wonder family members. I loved each of them for the many years that we had them. They all loved cuddling next to or sleeping on people laps, and were all gentle and friendly cats. I miss them all.

Our latest cat is more like the first one. I try to treat him as a part of the family, but he is a menace. He'll go from nuzzling up against your leg to trying to bite it off in zero seconds flat. Sometimes I wonder if he has multiple personalities. He's really crazy. But I still treat him as best I can at any given moment, even when he is trying to bite my leg off...

 

[jomar]

We love the little dog despite his ways.

 

[SeaCat]

Thanks all. Your answers make me feel better. Some people think my wife and myself crazy for getting attached to our "pets". Maybe it's because they just don't understand?

I was raised with animals. Some were raised for food, (I never allowed myself to become attached to them,) while others were part of the family. I have had exotics, neurotics and some just plain odd animals as pets. All of them have been in one way or another a part of the family.

The oddest was a pure white, non albino Persian Cat. He, (Max) was also one of the largest cats I have ever seen. As a kitten he could nestle in the palm of you hand. As an adult cat he was as high as my knee at the shoulders and weighed over 40 pounds, none of it fat. (He was the only cat I have seen who could pick up a legal Blue Fish and walk away with it.) This cat was one of the most loving pets with family members and would play with my parents dog all day. Non Family members couldn't get near him and strange dogs in the yard were viewed as convenient chew toys and mobile scratching posts. (We had more people trying to sue us for the Vet Bills after their dogs wandered into our yard. Too bad there was a leash law.)

Cat

 

[starrkers]

Cat, people think I'm nuts because I have five cats - three of them blowins - that are house pets and not expected to earn their keep. They can't understand why I would "waste" money taking them to a vet when they need it, or that I would waste time tending to them.
Since we moved to our squatter's camp, Harry needs brushing out everyday (several times if he'll let me). He's a long hair and the grass seeds are ferocious particularly in his tail. He was one of the abandoned kittens we took on in January. He's grown into the most gorgeous looking beastie - complete idiot, but you can't have everything!
People don't get why I'd take in a cat that means "work" in brushing out and I get nothing back from it. Nothing? He purrs and cuddles up to the brush (when he's in the mood), he's endless entertainment with his antics. Yeah, he sheds everywhere and knocks stuff on the floor to get our attention, breaks stuff regularly and is a pain in the neck at 4am.
But he's family. And so is Randall (now nicknamed Snagglepuss due to the lack of one canine tooth); Juliet the burmese princess with the worst breath in the world;' Pantene, the gorgeous black princess with mood swings - she'll cuddle and purr and love and then attack with claws and fangs while still purring; and who could forget little Billy, Harry's "brother" and all round sweetypie? And of course Patch, the poor profoundly put upon little pooch.

 

[EmeraldKitten]

I would love to have one of these...

Savannah Cats

They're big and beautiful!