Jan Talkmeme - pets

[tielan]

adafrog: How about your thoughts on pets?

Pets are a responsibility and a pleasure. I mention the responsibility first because they're a lifetime committment - the lifetime of the pet. Yes, circumstances change and sometimes you have to give up a pet for reasons, but when you take an animal into your family it should be with the firm intent and willingness to give it a Forever Home.

I never needed this explained to me; we had our first cat when I was five and my dad brought her home (she was always 'his' cat, even after the divorce when he came back to Sydney to visit, she would greet him very affectionately). She died when I was around 22 - for her that was a very ripe old age. At least, we presume she died - she vanished into the bushland out the back of the property one day and we never saw her again.

I got my first cat at 21, having moved into a house I owned with a couple of guys (we owned the house as tenants-in-common, which means that each part of the house was separately owned and didn't revert to the others in the case of death). They weren't particularly cat people, but they liked her well enough.

She was a lot like me: solitary and introverted, happy to sit quietly with her favourite people (me), and claw whatever was available to claw (only the stairs, thankfully). She moved with me from Wollongong to Sydney and then around and about Sydney for two years until we settled back at the house in Turramurra.

Her favourite place was on the router - nice and warm. *points to icon* She slept on the bed with me from about 2 years old onwards, and made her own furry little 'mat' on the sheets.

She died in early 2011, and those of you who knew me then know that I was overseas when she did and had to wait 3 weeks until we got home to bury her. She's sleeping under a gardenia that I got the same year I got her, at the parentals', which I figured was a better option since our place was eventually going to be dug up for units.

We cat-sat for some friends that summer - two burmese whom my sisters called 'the furry gentlemen' - and they were very adorable, very laid-back guys, who had no compunction about adopting our laps the instant we sat down. Crosbie was noisy and Charlie was quiet and sick (he had medication which we had to give him). But they were lovely and friendly cats, and we loved having them there.



I went to visit a friend out west that summer, too - about six weeks after her cat had given birth to a litter of kittens. The kittens were on the verge of going feral, but me and another girl basically spent the weekend petting them, feeding them, and getting them accustomed to people. And when, at the end of the summer, we farewelled The Furry Gentlemen back to their owners, I called my friend and asked if I could have two of the kittens.



Enter Smokey and Maladicta, who are the two bundles of fur and purr that you see around and about on my journal and my quilts.



They're about four years old now, and adorable pests (as cats are).

Talkmeme Masterpost

Comments

[everbright]

Oh lovely! I never knew Smoky and Mal were sisters, I just thought they had similar coloring.