This post was inspired by JustMarie and her post Homing the Homeless
I’ve had so many furry critters in my life. When I was a toddler/preschooler we had two Basset Hounds, Toto and Vicky. Toto had a litter of puppies, 13 of them. I remember we named two of them, Horse and Clover. Horse because he was the biggest and Clover because not only was she the runt, but she had a mark on her back the shape of a clover. Clover was my first experience with death. All those puppies got cold and piled on top of each other…smothering poor little Clover. I remember not being allowed to go out with my brothers when they buried her. I can still remember standing on the couch watching out the window as they carried her and a shovel out of my sight. I cried so hard. When we were living in Connecticut Vicky got out of the fenced in back yard. We searched for her for several days; I remember Mom getting a phone call from a vet saying that she had been hit by a car. I cried and cried. This prompted Dad to decide the back yard was too small for dogs and he gave Toto away. I cried. Not long after that Dad got transferred to New Hampshire , my first question was whether or not we could get Toto back.
While in NH the school I attended was small, very small, so small that First, Second, and Third grade all shared the same classroom and two teachers. During Second Grade we had a class pet: a guinea pig that went by the name Peanuts. (He was black and brown; the brown was the color of peanut butter….) When the weekends would come one of the students would take Peanuts and his cage home to take care of him. When it was my turn to bring him home my family fell in love. The question came up, what was Mrs. Charles going to do with Peanuts come summer time? She told us that whoever wanted him should bring a note to school from his or her parents stating that they could have Peanuts. Oh my goodness, I remember rushing home all full of excitement…please please please can we adopt Peanuts? I went to school the next day with a prized note of acceptance. Oh, then I was worried, what if someone else’s parent sent a note, too? I was told the notes would be put into a hat and the winner would be drawn out. I could hardly stand the suspense while waiting for the rest of the week to come to an end. I know the teachers got sick of me asking if someone else had brought in a note. I could not fathom why no one else wanted the little Pig. Finally the day came and I was the sole note bringer. Peanuts was mine!! Never was a guinea pig loved as much as that one. I played and played with that poor little pig; I’d tie a piece of yarn around his neck and take him for a walk. Mom says he’d come back inside with the bottoms of his feet bloody from where I ‘dragged’ him. Dad built him a new cage when we moved to ME and it sat in the hall-way near the kitchen. Peanuts learned to squeal when the refrigerator door was opened, he’d squeal until he was given a piece of lettuce or carrot, it didn’t matter if he still had a piece in his cage from last time he’d still squeal. (Getting supper ready was so much fun!) My parents tell me that after I went to bed in the evenings, Peanuts would get out of his cage and go wandering the house. He’d pay them a visit in the family room and when he got tired he’d go crawl back in his cage. Peanuts died of old age on my Mom’s birthday. I cried so hard.
For my birthday the next year I wanted a rabbit. The day before my birthday my Dad went out into his shop area where he started measuring, sawing and hammering. I went bouncing out there: “What are you building? A rabbit cage?” “No a coffee table for your Mother.” “Nuh huh….it’s gonna be a rabbit cage!” He kept insisting it was going to be a coffee table, I kept insisting it was going to be a rabbit cage. He almost had me convinced that it was something for my Mom for Mother’s Day (my birthday is May 11th and it falls on Mother’s Day quite regularly) but when he drug out the paint can I knew it wasn’t a coffee table. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be, but Mom would not have a Battleship Grey coffee table in her home. I got called inside before the wires and such got attached so I didn’t really see the finished product until much later. Not long after that my parent’s had to make a run to the store for some ‘forgotten’ birthday party supplies. While they were gone my brothers set in telling me how I wasn’t getting a rabbit; that Dad had not built a rabbit cage, etc…they thought they had convinced me that I wasn’t getting a rabbit; but I knew I was…I just knew it. Sure enough, when my parent’s came home they had a bunny rabbit in their possession. He was white with a few black spots down his back. Just to continue the ruse, I named him ‘Surprise’. I wanted everyone to think they had surprised me, when they hadn’t. Things I learned while owning a rabbit: if you feed them rhubarb, they will pee red and it will scare a kid to death thinking that the rabbit is bleeding to death. They bite and it hurts. They like clover and will escape their cage often in order to get to it. If your rabbit is missing check the big clover patch before panicking and looking elsewhere. One October day while I was at school, I felt something wasn’t right in my world but I couldn’t figure out what it was. When I got home I asked Mom if everyone in the family was okay and they were. I went out to feed Surprise and he was lying in his cage, dead. I cried when we buried him next to Peanuts.
Also while we lived in my Dad got a dog. A Brittany spaniel, his name was Rebel. I don’t remember too much about him, except I tried to teach him lots of tricks and he just didn’t learn them. When we found out we were moving to California Dad said Rebel couldn’t go. It wouldn’t be fair to a country dog to move him to the city where he’d be confined to a small fenced in backyard.
While we were in CA my parents got me another rabbit. This one was solid black with a white nose. I named him Cotton, because he was as soft as a cotton ball. He escaped his cage a lot, too. But he always stayed inside the fence. We left him with my brother when we moved to Mississippi.
Once settled in MS my Dad said I could have a dog. Another Brittany spaniel was purchased; this one was registered, we named him Patricia’s Rebel Ben. He was still a puppy when he ran off. I knew he was ignoring me as I called for him. I also knew the second he decided to come, because that was the second I saw the car. I’ll never forget the sight of that car hitting my puppy, but I didn’t stick around for the ending. I was running into the house; hysterical. It wasn’t until after we buried him that I found out that car went into the ditch trying to avoid hitting him.
That is all of the critters I had as pets when I was living at home. Coming sometime soon will be a run-down of the critters I've had since CR and I have been together.
