REVEAL YOUR PETS 2 ME >:3c

I must go now, and cuddle my dog

 

oh, I confused the goldfish with betta fish sorry.

I didn't mean to imply that you didn't know how to keep betta fish, the ten gallon was more in reference to chaoticarbiter talking about the vase, though maybe I should've quoted that post as part of that. Sorry for making you feel bad about your fish.

 

Not my cat but I just wanted to show everyone this video because a) it reminds me of when YouTube was a lot less shitty and b) LOOK AT THAT CAT AAHH

 

omg yes
i love shoulder!adventure!cats
and there' this lovely thing of people who like doing outdoors things having cats who are chill and interested in going with :3c

 

Another not-my-cat video:

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAH
THIS IS ADORABLE

 

more like kitten acatemy
i'll show myself out

 

I'm a sucker for theme names for pets, I love that the kittens (plus momcats) are named after fabrics and fonts.

 

And then I worked a lot and couldn't computer. Reply time!

Clarice! We bought her on Friday the 13th and wanted a horror movie name that was also cute so we named her after Clarice Starling. Right now Clarice is scared of me because I'm a big stranger so she doesn't let me pet or hold unless my girlfriend takes her out but this is to be expected. I can wait. She will love me. Eventually.

When it comes to buying any animal, there are a few ways to go about it--search for local breeders (usually the best option for a long-term pet), look on sites like craigslist for people selling animals they can't keep anymore (yes, really), or go to a big chain store--or, if you're really lucky, a small, local pet store, which are havens of happy animals. I went to the local Petsmart, which, about that,

My girlfriend is employed by the local Petsmart, and she's one of the pet care workers there. She works her ass off trying to keep the animals there happy and healthy but sometimes there's nothing doing. Sometimes she walks into work and something she tried really hard to take care of for days was forgotten or not seen dying. Sometimes they forget to schedule an opening pet care worker and she walks in to hear none of the animals have been fed and she has to do that while doing customer services. Once an incompetent coworker of hers poured something that absolutely destroyed the fish tanks into the entire tank system, so when she came to work, the water was white and thousands of fish (seriously) were dead. She spent the whole day at work desperately saving as many as she could while upper management tried to take workers away from the rescue operation to work the registers. She bought a snake from her store using money we basically didn't have because she knew for a fact that a woman who wouldn't be able to take care of her was going to buy her if no one else did first. She got into a lot of trouble for that, but too goddamn bad. We took this mouse home because they had gotten a shipment of mice too young and too small but them's the breaks. Their supplier constantly gives them animals of the wrong age or gender, so they have accidental births in the back of the store all the time, and Lilly (my girlfriend) just tries to keep as many as she can alive and healthy while in the same high-stress worker environment every retail worker works in--she's given too many tasks and not enough hours for her job and she has to keep ignorant customers happy while she does it, despite being responsible for hundreds of tiny lives. The store changed policy recently and told her she could not refuse to sell people animals because she was refusing to sell fish and animals to people with cages and tanks too small so damn often.

This is why we have so many pets. She keeps rescuing them from the local store. (And occasionally, as I mentioned earlier, rescuing them from people who can't have them or don't want them anymore and are selling on the internet--she got three of her ferrets that way over the years.) I agree with your comment--if you want a healthy, well-socialized animal, especially if you're giving a pet to a child, you probably want to go to a small breeder or a local, non-chain store, who has been taking better care of them. Animals rescued from chain stores or from former owners are often poorly socialized, violent, or sickly. She lost several of her ferrets in the first year of having them because they were ill suited to live. Gwen still bites strangers after 5 years in a good home. Our rescue cat has no damn idea she shouldn't claw my face to wake me up. I can't tell you how often she uses the last of her saved up emergency money to go to the vet to try to save one of them. Don't go to a store like Petsmart if you don't want to risk that. DEFINITELY don't if you're not prepared to be TAKING CARE of something.

If you want to love an animal who really needs it and, as a non-zero possibility, save them from dying early, go to a big chain store.

 

Hes not actually ours but BIG SQUISH IS A VISIT because flooding. Hes so soft and a total cuddle bug. Also he knocked my sis' gamecube into the water in our garage but we're not talking about that

 

I skimmed, sorry, but basically- I dont fault the workers at chain stores at all, i just think that for someone looking to get their first of something they should go the easiest way possible bc early failure can be a big damper on continuing to keep more of those types of pets. Plus it gives, idk, perspective?
My bettas probably mostly die bc of bad genetics(tumors, kidney issues, etc.) bc yeah, theyve all been from petsmart/petco but bc they often dont live super long i worry a fuck ton about whether im doing an okay job. My shrimp are from a fellow hobbyist and have largely done super well the last... Almost 3 years now, and since they recieve largely the same basic care and inverts are supposed to be more delicate, it reassures me that it's probably not all my fault when my bettas die.

 

Some of the local chain pet stores, (petsmart I think?) for big pets like cats don't sell them directly, but have a local spot for "Need homes NOW" shelter animals, which is actually pretty cool. I don't know about their little pets though. But I really like their "look at these shelter babies fall in love plz" section for kitties. There was a super sweet bunch of black cats one halloween because they were being actively avoided in-shelter and they were all "LOOK AT THESE HARMLESS KITTIES AREN'T THEY ADORABLE???" And there was a floofy black puffball I wanted SO BAD who was rubbing up against the bars trying to get love and kissed my fingers through them but grandpa hates cats and barely tolerates our current one so no kitty for me T_T

 

Oh absolutely, the petsmart here is great for cats! They work with my absolute favorite cat shelter, and the bios they have posted on the glass for all of them are the most precious thing. I'm not sure where the petco here gets their cats, but it might be the same shelter, and ik they have adoption days for dogs too.

I'm mostly talking small animals like mice, birds, fish, etc. animals that the general population often knows very little about proper care-wise, which is something that companies(not employees) often take advantage of(the myriad of tiny betta "condos", hamster balls, too small rodent enclosures, etc.). Also the birds at least are absolutely overpriced. Petsmart's cockatiels are $150, while i got my baby from a breeder at a bird fair for literally half of that. Plus, I got to hold him and make friends with him before buying, and you cant do that at a chain store.(that was actually why i got him lol, i didnt really want a 'tiel his color, but he picked me)

Ferrets are like the one exception bc in this state at least(and i think maybe over most/all of the US) ferrets are heavily regulated and basically all petstore ferrets come from Marshall's. They're all spayed and descented, and very social as far as ive encountered. Their breeding is regulated bc the females will keep going into heat over and over and its very bad for their health, so you have to have a license to breed them and legally have to get them spayed before selling to someone unless theyre also licensed, meaning very few people do besides that company, and no stores just sell unspayed ferrets.

 

BIG SQUISH!!! Oh, what a lovely fellow!

g̶a̶m̶e̶c̶u̶b̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶c̶u̶b̶e̶

 

so mischievous!!!

 

This is Bruce. He's a boxer/pit bull mix, we aren't sure how old he is because he's a rescue, and he basically loves every single person ever. Very panicky sometimes, especially around other dogs, but he's just the biggest sweetheart.

 

OH my god what a beautiful baby please tell Bruce I love him and that I am in spirit scratching his ears



Leg



I want to make an "I lik the leg" poem for cass in this pic but I have no idea how to rhyme in english. I can barely rhyme in Portuguese

 

He lik the cream

 

*attempts to pet tum through screen*

 

* continues to love every cat I see in this thread *