Pets

I am addicted to animals!

This started several years ago when I got a couple of guinea pigs as pets for my daughter. Nevermind, they became mine, all mine. Then I fell in love with a beautiful long haired guinea pig at a store. She had babies (pre-pregnancy) and that was the start of my show career. Yes, there are purebreed guinea pigs, and shows just like dog shows! I joined my daughter to 4H and starting breeding. For about 5 years I had around 30 guinea pigs in the house at one time. I also had rabbits; took in neglected and unwanted guinea pigs, and became an expert in how to care for them, etc.

It was alot of fun, but alot of work also. My daughter did 4H for years, but finally got tired of it, and started begging for something else. We adopted our first cat, and a Florida Kingsnake after that. Below are our current pets with their stories.

Kiki:
Kiki is a longhaired white cat with calico markings. I found her on the internet and fell immediately in love with her. I called the shelter to see if she was still there, they put her on hold. We picked her up the next day. She is very shy and loving. She likes to sleep with us at night, and prowls around the house pretending to be a tiger, however she is really soft and sweet. She was very mellow with the guinea pigs and was best friends with one of the rabbits. I think of her as an old lady with her crocheting. She loves watching the birds outdoors, and the leaves blowing in the trees.

Here's the website of the organization we adopted her from, FAIR

Minerva:
Minerva is our second kitty, all black with a couple of tiny spots of white. She appeared in our yard shortly before Christmas 2005 , digging through the trash. We put some food out for her, and within two days she had jumped into my daughter's arms. We took that as a hint and adopted her. She is our stalker cat, all the toys and balls belong to her. She will chase after balls like a dog and carry her toy mousies around the house. She likes to flop down in a pathway and roll on her back to stretch. She doesn't mind if you rub your foot on her belly, but if you put your hand down there, she'll grab and start biting. She's the first one to the kitchen when the fridge door opens. She's mellowed with age, and will sit down in the chair next to us whenever we're at the computer.

The boys are Todd Sweeny and Tiger/Edward. They belonged to our neighbors at one point who were no longer able to take care of them. They are completely different little guys, but since we had them as (older) kittens, have bonded together.

Todd is a gorgeous black and white tuxedo cat. He is a lover, and will sit on a counter top and butt heads with you while purring away. He is also is a patrol cat and will walk the perimeters, checking for intruders. I call him my guard cat. His downfall is high places. He is most at home with his body one foot from the ceiling. Therefore he has a space on top of the bookshelf in my daughter's room, he also gets the top of the fridge, and keeps trying to climb on top of the wall cabinet in the bathroom or rummage around in the top of the closet. Needless to say, he gets in trouble sometimes!

Tiger came along a little later. He's fawn and black tiger striped. He is the only cat I've ever heard of that does annoyance meowing. He had a twin brother that he was never apart from until he was 6 months old. Unfortunately before we adopted him, the twin disappeared, so I think he suffers from separation anxiety. After 3 months he has finally calmed down, and though he's still a talker, his voice is much softer and it seems to mean something. He'll "talk" to you while you're petting him, and gets really frustrated if he's left alone in a room without other cats or humans. His plus is that he loves to lay on your feet and will stay that way all night if you let him. (Todd is banned from spending the night in our bedroom because he never gives up on his quest for the highest spot in the room, crash, bang.)

Ben:
Ben is our second foray into the world of reptiles. He was chosen because he is beautiful, gentle, and a fairly small animal. After we had Louie for awhile (our kingsnake) Kristina started thinking about having a lizard. We went though several weeks of looking at different ones, asking about the difficulty of care and full grown size, temperament, etc. After about a month of consideration, we settled on a little guy labeled: Fire Skink. Well he wasn't really a fire skink (he's a Berber skink) and that had us confused for quite a while. He's very calm, so all you have to do is pick him up, put him on your shoulder and walk around, or sit and watch TV with him under a blanket. He's easy to feed and the hardest part has been figuring out how to exercise him without getting lost. Otherwise, he looks like an empty cage most of the time, since he likes to burrow at the bottom of his litter and hide. He's a neat little guy.