Bunny the Pig

Ok, we have all had pets which have wound their way around our hearts, little furry creatures who made each day a little bit brighter just by being there with their eyes full of devotion. And then there are other pets. Pets like Bunny the Pig.

Remember junior high science class, sitting in the room with the animals in cages in the back? You know the room I’m talking about, the room with the guinea pigs. The science teacher would open the refrigerator for something or other and the little guinea pigs would squeak in delight, sure that they were going to get a lettuce treat. Do you remember? 

That’s when I decided that someday I would get me a guinea pig. Flash forward many years and many pets to a daughter who wanted a guinea pig, had to have a guinea pig. And there was her dad, living 400 miles away in a different state offering to give her the guinea pig which her step-sister and half-sister no longer wanted.

I do tend to take in the strays.

So, Bunny the Pig came home to live in our basement for many years. The poor thing. With cats and dogs already in the house, she couldn’t live upstairs where one bedroom door left open would be her demise (I will share the hamster story another time). So she was sequestered to the office in the basement, where the door was always sure to stay closed. 

After what seemed like a few decades – I truly lost track, but someone thought it was seven years! – Bunny took a road trip back to South Dakota, from whence she came. My daughter’s sisters said that the guinea pig lived on for several more years.

And who would have ever guessed that while on a volunteer trip to Peru I would someday eat guinea pig. And like it.

More pets that didn't work out

Sometimes things just don't work out the way I planned. Or, actually, what happens is that I am too lazy.

I had other pets that I wanted to tell you about, but it appears I don't have any of their pictures scanned into the computer. So instead of dragging out the old photo albums, you get what I have on file already. These little critters.

A very long time ago, I worked with a woman who had hermit crabs. She always had stories to tell about them and she even brought them to work once. They were so cool and I decided I had to get some one day.

It didn't take too much, back in 2008, to twist Val's arm into begging her step-dad into letting us get some. We had bought the painted shells at Virginia Beach that spring, so we only had to bide our time until the time was right.

I can't even remember their names. One was Wilma and the other must have been Betty. Needless to say, they didn't live long. The temperature and humidity in our house must not have been right for them. It was pretty gruesome though when they half-crawled out of the little shells and shriveled up and died. Yikes. I felt bad about that, bad enough that we never tried that again.

Muffins comes home

I am going to try once again to get on track and write with some sort of theme. I’m back on the animal track, planning over the next few weeks to fill you in on some of the animals I may have missed.

It was 21 years ago, early May I think, and I had just come home from the annual state CMA convention. We’d been in our house eight months. Nick was five and Val had just turned one. I pulled the car into the garage, gathered my things and ambled into the house. Before I could even hug the kids “hello”, Nick was sputtering. “You didn’t see it? You walked right through the garage and didn’t notice anything?”

I diligently went back into the garage to have a look. There on a blanket next to the riding mower was a little bundle of brown. She spied me standing in the door and wobbled to me on chubby legs.

We had been throwing around the idea of getting a dog and while I was out of town that weekend, someone offered my first husband a six-week-old puppy. Nick named her Muffins Mandie-dog Rowdy. I don’t know where it all came from, except that my sister had a dog named Mandie and this puppy was rowdy.

Val hadn’t started walking yet. As we were all sitting around the kitchen floor playing with the new addition, Val let go of the cupboard and walked to us. Either she forgot herself or she didn’t want the dog getting all the attention. But that is the story of how we got another pet and how Val learned to walk on her own two feet. 

The Kind Decision

We make so many decisions every day, decisions we don’t even think about. What socks to wear, whether to buy gas today or hope there’s enough in the tank until tomorrow, what to have for supper, what TV show to watch or what book (or blog) to read instead. And some decisions are big. Should I apply for that job? Should I go back to school? Should I have another kid (what? Absolutely not.)?

When we make the decision to get a pet, we make a commitment to that animal for as long as it lives. Even if we decide to give that pet away, I know at least for me, I cannot give that pet away in my heart. And what kind of decision do we make when they are old and suffering? How do we make that decision to end their pain?

Keshia, our black cat, the first pet I owned that was truly mine, was nineteen years old. She had gone from playful kitten, to lazy housecat, to a frail bag of bones which cried day and night. She would wander the house as if looking for something which she just could never find. When she finally laid down someplace and the meowing subsided, she would drool.

With trembling fingers, I punched the numbers into the phone. Yes, they could fit her in that afternoon. I set her on a blanket in the backseat of the car. She didn’t move, but she continued to cry. Once inside the office, though, her wailing stopped. I held her up to the window so she could look outside as we waited for them to call her name. Did she know why we had come?

The vet examined her, explained the physical condition of cats her age, but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t. He offered some options. I nodded my head, and chose the option which I had come for. He agreed with my decision. I transferred her into a pair of kind hands and took my seat back in the waiting room.

The clock on the wall ticked. Ticked. Ticked. A man came in with a yellow lab who wore the “collar of shame”. She had several healing wounds on her side and legs. “We think a wolf attacked her,” her owner explained, even though I hadn’t asked.

“Chris,” the vet tech was at the counter. “She’s not suffering anymore. She quietly slipped away. We will call you when she’s ready to be picked up. You can pay the bill then.”

Weird. My husband picked her up in a flowered can the following week. Another decision. What am I supposed to do with her now? And so there her tin can of ashes sits, next to Shadow’s and Pepper’s, but I’ll write about that another time.

Where Did I Come From?

Hello, it’s me, Dino. It has been a long time since Mom has let me on the computer. She has not been on it much this week. She says she has another my-grain, so she doesn’t do much when she is home.

Let me tell you how I came to my forever home. It was in the spring four years ago. I was at the pound in Crandon and Dad came to see me early one morning. He brought Mom and my girl Val to meet me in the afternoon. I was so happy to meet them. I kept jumping on them but they didn’t seem to mind like most of the people at the pound. There was a boy who helped walk me and the other dogs that were at the pound. He told Mom and Dad that he called me Demon because I was so wild. I only acted wild because I was so happy whenever people were around.

Mom and Dad – well – I am not so good with words. But Mom and Dad knew what was inside of me, that I was more than just hyper-puppy. Mom brought me home two days later. I was very naughty the next morning. Mom was disappointed with me but she didn’t spank me or anything.

I don’t remember when or why they started calling me the Wonder Dog. I am really not that super. But I love my people and would do anything for them that I could. Lucky for me, it seems that they are especially happy with me when I am just sleeping on the couch.

Cat-titude

When I was putting things on one of my new bookshelves, I spied Betty sleeping innocently on the dog’s bed. She is the most laid back of our cats, so I couldn’t resist putting her on the shelf to see what she thought. In typical cat-titude she looked around and didn’t do much. “Hmm?” she said to herself. “This is ok, gives me a nice view of the room. I think I’ll stay.”

I confess that I am a cat lover. I admire their independence, but still each of our four cats has its own personality, its own way of thinking about us people and each other. I also am a dog lover, as you probably guessed just by the name of this blog.

What a great thing that we have our pets, whether cats, dogs, horses or rabbits. Or even birds. What a wonderful God we have to give us all the different animals just for our enjoyment.

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. Genesis 2:19 New International Version