Stories About Pets

Our oldest (current) cat is Paisley, matriarch of the cat family. She had six kittens, but we only have one of them still and he's all grown up! Paisley spent a lot of time inside when we got her as a kitten (all of our cats are outside cats because we have people with allergies) and she had a habit of biting people's feet that she fortunately grew out of. These days her main hobby is lying down on things and going to sleep.

Spoiler

# @Fish butt #pictures for you to look at!

 

@jacktrash we used to have a maine coon and she was the sweetest cat i've ever met.

 

So, Lilly like to steal my computer, and Ty likes to sit use my hand for a pillow. Neither one is much help with computering.

Spoiler: Sleepy Kitties

And this kitty looks like Hexe, my first cat. She growled, played fetch, and killed erasers. Lucy, my other first cat, was the best lil hunter, she even killed bird once, which for an inside cat is quite a feat. I still kinda miss them.

 

When I was a baby, she decided she was sort of my mother. So she was my cat mom, I guess, and she was really nice. I miss her.

 

Spoiler: My old cat, Chakra

So my old cat died a few weeks ago, I posted about her getting hurt and stuff in her own thread here.
I really miss her for her being herself, but she was also my therapy animal. Like, I really need a cat in my life.
So I tried out Tiny at the beginning of this week.She's a 2 year old adult.

Spoiler: Tiny

I fell in love with her. She's quiet, and playful, and sweet. But she's not really a cuddler. Or very social at all. Unfortunately I can only have one cat, and she's not really a therapy cat. So she went back home on Wednesday.
So we picked up a kitten Tuesday night. He's six or seven weeks old, really playful, but also cuddly.
I decided to name him Foggy today.

Spoiler: Foggy kitten

 

This big doofus is joska! Hes an ex-puppymill stud, and by the time the place got busted they were just going to put him down because he'd "never be able to function in a normal home". Our other dog pretty much adopted him and spent four years leading him around going 'pee here, eat this, leave that alone you total numbskull thats a rock its not for eating, dont flip out thats just grass' and joska thought the gods dropped our dog on the earth just for him.

Jos still tends to be scared of new things and tries to eat not-food, but still. Hes as big a cuddle bug as there ever was in the whole world. And dear lord should you hear the baby SHRIEK with joy when he sees joska come down the stairs, your heart would grow two sizes.
*hi tiny human hi i love you hi i give you kisses ok hi*

 

Between my boyfriend and I, we have three dogs and seven cats, with another dog that is technically his grandmother's, but her grandmother lives with him, so it's part of the crew.
I only have my dog Strider here. He's a salt-and-pepper schnauzer with sunglasses marks on his face. he's not very smart, but we cant even say the words 'go for a walk' anymore or he will lose his shit.
My boyfriend's dogs are Odin - a stray we picked up as a puppy who's blind in the right eye, and is even simpler than Simple Dog. he is about 95% tail and once knocked himself on the side from wagging it. The girl is Artemis, who's a rott mix who thinks she's a lapdog and is also the big boss: whenver its time for them to go back to their fenced part of the yard but odin is being difficult, my boyfriend tells Artemis to go get him - and she drags poor odin by the neck all the way to their house.
Cats are Dr. Sheldon Cooper PhD, George Foreman Grill, Tico, Catniss Everdeen (the only girl), Cartman, Kenny, and Stan. Cartman, Kenny and Stan are Catniss's kittens, and they had two siblings called Kyle and Draco Malfoy, but they passed away before their first week.

 

I have two dogs, both rescues that have been here since I was a teeny little KB. There is a brindled who-knows-what named Libby and a jack russel-yorkshire mix named Rascal. However, I have rather concluded that Rascal might be part cat because he sure does like crawling into places. There is a spot underneath the middle seat of the couch where he likes to hide (I imagine it must be weird for guests to sit on the couch and hear him make dog noises directly nder them.) He also like this little nook area where we hang towels to dry - he will occasionally knock towels down, and the look on his doggy face is great there.
And just a little while ago, he decided to do the cat-in-box thing and crawl into a cardboard box on its side filled with crumpled up newspapers. I only regret I didn't get photos, it was adorable.

 

I don't have any pets that are mine specifically, but my parents have two: a poodle named Wiley and a very fluffy cat named Ellie.

Ellie is a former stray who was totally abandoned by our asshole former neighbors when they moved. (I know, it's horrifying. D: ) My mom took to feeding her; she thought she was feral at first, but she's actually very sweet and friendly and really ended up warming up to my mom. She looks big but is actually tiny--she's like, at least 75% fur. Floofy cat.

Wiley is the friendliest dog ever I swear to fucking God. Like, everyone he meets is a potential friend. Sadly, his early life wasn't so great--his old owners returned him to his breeder under mysterious circumstances with a severely broken leg, resulting from being thrown. It breaks my heart to know anyone could hurt an innocent pet like that, especially one as sweet and loving as Wiley. For a long time he was wary of men with Mexican accents--we suspect the person who abused him fell into that category--but thankfully for everyone we were able to train that out of him, mainly by having local Mexican guys give him doggy treats so he'd have a better association there. :P He also had to go through a lot of physical therapy, and to this day he's got a slight limp, but he was a real trooper and he's doing so well.

One fun thing Wiley likes to do is go under my mom's skirts (she often wears ankle-length skirts or dresses) and poke his head out from the other side. We call it "peek-a-poo." Also, when @Neurogabu first met him, she said something along the lines of "your guard dog's stuck on 'friendly'" when he greeted her by bouncing around. (Like, when he meets new people he's like "HELLO FRIEND!!!!!!!! I AM A DOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!")

 

I currently am pet-less, which is probably for the best because I am not to be trusted with living things more frail than like. Houseplants. (That is a debatable thing, even, since when I had a pet chili plant I would sometimes forget to water it and only noticed when it started drying up. Granted, it was a pet chili plant because I was alone in an apartment in a country where I was only barely conversational in the language. Less than optimal situation.)

My mother has however adopted the fish that used to be under my care until I literally could not take it anymore because fish are high maintenance and I didn't have the spoons to adequately care for them. (It was not my idea to make me responsible for living things, that was my sister's idea. She did not realize that this was a terrible idea until we got into a fairly passive-aggressive fight about her dumping small living things on me when I tend to fail to have enough spoons to take care of me, let alone anything else.) Happily they survived me and are now being spoiled rotten by my mother. They are totally her favorite children. My sister named them One, Two, and Three.

 

Most of our pets were here before me (and the joke is that I'm a stray they took in as well, though that's for a different thread). The current count is four cats, three dogs, two tortoises, one bearded dragon, one guinea pig, and one bird. The number fluctuates as animals prove to be incompatible with each other/us/the baby, but that's as it stands right now.

however I was directed here to talk about this sack of floof:

Spoiler: tw animal abuse, death

D was previously a bather at Large Chain Pet Supplies Store, where people would frequently drop off animals because not only is our local shelter a kill shelter, it is awful. One day this old couple brought in this little traumatized furball, saying someone had tossed a laundry basket out on the highway. they thought it was full of stuffed animals until it started moving - thor was the only one that escaped the truck that went by afterwards.

D called S and we drove her to go pick her up - she'd been in a carrier in the grooming area all day, full of barking dogs. She never did like dogs after that. But she stayed in our (mine & at-the-time GF's) room, which is when we realized her leg was broken. We took her to the nearest Banfield (I'm naming them because they were really good to us in the long run), where she was all checked out and we got their wellness plan thing bc...this was gonna take some work.

The leg wasn't able to heal properly, and they didn't want to pin it because she was so tiny and it would have been a lot of extra surgeries to constantly move it as she grew. She would have to have the leg amputated. Which was NOT covered in the wellness plan, and would be about a thousand dollars. It was a quality of life thing at that point. Constant surgeries (expensive, quality of life issue), giant casts (impractical), amputation (also expensive), or putting her to sleep (soul-crushing).

They raised the money for us. They called donors and sponsors and got the thousand dollars for us. God, I'm still tearing up over it. (D says it's because they fucked her up with the cast and knew it and wanted to make amends but whatever, they didn't have to do that.) So she turned into a tripod and became attached to my hip. Or, more often than not, my boobs. She got around just as well as she had with the cast, and wrestled with the other cats and climbed all over everything (and my boobs) and even loved the kiddo. I have pictures of them napping together (which I am refraining from posting because it's not my kiddo and everyone I could ask for permission to post it is asleep).

Unfortunately, due to complications after I had my baby, I was in the hospital for three or four extra days. When I came back, Thor was not as I had left her. She was sick, no energy, wouldn't eat, wasn't eliminating properly. Like, wasn't even hiding it like cats will do, she didn't want nobody but me to touch her and would fucking cut you if you tried. And even if I'd had the ability to take her to the vet, with my poor traumatized body, I didn't have the money, thanks to the previously mentioned GF cutting and running (again, different thread). So I laid her on towels and cuddled with her when she managed to make it to the sofa and sat with her as she died.

She was on borrowed time to start with; there is no reason she shouldn't have gone the way the rest of her litter did. I'm glad she spent it with me, and I hope she was too.



one of the first pictures I took of her, and one of the last. (I was torn between that one and the one with her back foot stuck up by her face; she ALWAYS slept like that and I never figured it out. Weird tripod cat leg positioning, I guess.) (edit: jesus that second one is huge, my apologies, also for the background dishes??? I was Recovering, okay.)

and that is why her name was thor: she fell out of the sky and cost me a ton of money

 

@Nochi all of the hugs for you.

 

I don't have a carrier for Foggy, so I've been using this little drawstring backpack to take him places. My old cat wouldn't have stood for it, but Foggy loves it! He will crawl right in the bag. I wear it backwards so he's cuddled against my chest. When I've taken him to visit my grandma, and someone lets the dogs in, he just pokes his head back in the bag and will peek out of it occasionally, but he feels safe in it.

 

@Soul That is seriously adorable. :)

 

I wrote about Foggy's bag because that's how we took him to the vet today, for his shots. He was super good at the vets, the only thing that bothered him at the actual vet's was the rectal thermometer. Which, like, was kind of unexpected for him and that was his personal business, so I don't blame him.
He is hurting now, though, from the shots. He's been sleeping a lot, and he meows in pain whenever I pick him up, so I'm not doing that unless necessary. Mostly I'm just letting him rest. Today was tough.

 

Have just had a training breakthrough with my German Shepherd, Zee (Siebold Adelbertskreiger "Orgrimm Doomhammer" Vom Haus Rentz on his papers, he's very fancy. It fits the breeder's request for a German Name and also mine of I Am A Huge Dork). I've never been able to find a reward treat that interests him enough to listen to me. He has very little food drive so treats are useless and has no special toys... Except the laser pointer.

You've all seen those gifs with cats climbing the fucking walls for the Red Bug. Now take the wackiest one you can think of and replace the cat with 100lbs of lean, heavily muscled dog.

I always figured he'd be too wrapped up chasing Red Bug to listen to me, but I figured, eh, why not.

A: Turn the bug off, cue frantic searching. "Sitz!"
Z: *utter confusion*
A: "Sitz!"
Z: Reluctantly sits
A: RedBug on.
Z: Immediately resumes bug hunt
A: Off. "Sitz!"
Z: Instant sit

This progresses rapidly into making him sit and stay/wait with the laser off, to waiting with the laser ON, to waiting while I leave the room, and then, miracle of miracles:

The escape-artist dog that has made me chase him for three solid blocks in one instance and nearly an hour in our front yard in multiple others sat and stayed, sides heaving, tail wagging, with the front door wide open for a solid minute with me filming him because he wanted the RedBug that badly.
I am so fucking excited this is great.