Pet Talk

[kungfubellydancer]

I live in a full house, but not short of animals. We've got 6 cockatiels and one cat. Not all the cockatiels are named (we had 17 but most got sold, and the remainder don't all have names) and the cat's name is Snickers.

 

Snickers is a strange cat. Not only is she one of the ugliest cats in existence with a dark brown mottled coat but she's got weird behaviors. Don't even bother buying her toys, she doesn't like them. Just turn on a light and make sure you have clear shadows. Yes, she likes to chase our shadows. Also, we feed her the dry cat food but occasionally we'll give her soft food, which she prefers. At first we will give her any given flavor, and, she may shake her paw at it and act like it doesn't meet her standards. She basically expects us to remove the flavor in exchange for a better one, but all the while it is actually good enough for her to eat but not her favorite. We don't give in, and later she'll give up trying to get us to open up a whole new can and eat it. It's not that she hates that flavor, it's just she expects us to give her a better one. Also, she is never on the right side of the door. When she wants a door opened she'll pound on it with her paws, letting the nearest human know she wants it open. But 5 minutes later she'll come back and want in, then she'll decide the room isn't good enough for her and leave. Rinse and repeat.

 

One of our cockatiels, Chibi-chan, is a tame male with a cute attitude. He loves to get out of the cage, and when a human opens the door and sticks a hand in, he immediately climbs on. However, if he hasn't had adequate exercise he'll trick us to let him out, then immediately fly in circles around the room. He's not flying because he's scared or spooked; he just wanted to fly. He's also learning to wolf whistle.

 

Another cockatiel named Okinawa (who died last year) was the mother of Chibi. She had a rep of knowing exactly what she wanted. If you played with her too much she will be sure to let you know she's annoyed and doesn't want to continue playing. She also had "marital arguments" with her mate Tunamasuki. But she was the greatest one.

 

Yoko, a cockatiel, loved baths, and while the others always tried to climb out of the sink, Yoko would walk under the streaming faucet and attempt to catch the water with her beak. Actually, she was born a little different and had some peculiar characteristics, and we just said she had something similar to Down's Sydrome for birds.

 

Talk about some of your pets!

[thekid345]

I have 3 dogs.

 

Rasta is 18 years old and a poodle. She is...strange. She can barely hear and see.She has this issue with chewing her left leg. She may die next year(mabye this year :( ) since she has two tumors on her stomach.

 

Then we have Billy. He is 6 and is fat and lazy. My parents constantly feed him human food which is a big problem, so me and my friends take him and their dogs to the park twice a week to lose some of that weight. He is a cuddler, but hates his feet and anything else to be played with. He is a pug beagle mix.

 

And our newest adition is Boo, a boston terrier pug mix. She is one of the most hyper dogs i have seen in my life. She chews everything in sight, despite being 4 and not a puppy. She loves human food.

 

My grandparents also have 2 dogs, a dingo mix and a..dang i cant think of the breed :wallbash: ! They also have 3 cats and 2 horses. And my aunt has 1 cat. So my family is FULl of animals :biggrin:

[Jonlissla]

Snickers is a strange cat. Not only is she one of the ugliest cats in existence with a dark brown mottled coat but she's got weird behaviors. Don't even bother buying her toys, she doesn't like them. Just turn on a light and make sure you have clear shadows. Yes, she likes to chase our shadows. Also, we feed her the dry cat food but occasionally we'll give her soft food, which she prefers. At first we will give her any given flavor, and, she may shake her paw at it and act like it doesn't meet her standards. She basically expects us to remove the flavor in exchange for a better one, but all the while it is actually good enough for her to eat but not her favorite. We don't give in, and later she'll give up trying to get us to open up a whole new can and eat it. It's not that she hates that flavor, it's just she expects us to give her a better one. Also, she is never on the right side of the door. When she wants a door opened she'll pound on it with her paws, letting the nearest human know she wants it open. But 5 minutes later she'll come back and want in, then she'll decide the room isn't good enough for her and leave. Rinse and repeat.

 

Haha, I know how you feel! We have three cats and each and one of them is virtually the same (except that I don't think they're ugly).

We also have a dog (Bicho Havanais), but he's alot more active than the cats.

We've had other animals too, but unfortunately you can't stop the sands of time, so we had to put them away. :confused:

 

All in all, they don't really have any real kind of strange habits (except the fact that the cats have been WAAAY too spoiled with good food and a warm sofa :thumbsup: ).

[ninja_lord666]

I have 3 (4) cats, 3 mice, and 1 newt. In the past, we've had many more animals: 3 other cats, 4 other mice, 3 frogs, 2 ferrets, ~ 14 snakes, and 1 tortoise.

 

I'll start at the beginning. When I was about 5, we got a cat Smokey. He was a light grey colour (hence the name). I don't remember much about him except that he would always attack out spider plants. :confused: He, unfortunately, ran away. We never saw him again.

 

The next year, we got a new cat, Misty. She is also grey, but a darker grey. She has white feet, a white tip on her tail, and a white belly. We still have her to this day. She isn't really strange, except that she believes she's queen of the house. The other cats and us people are there only to serve her. She will, however, eat almost anything...except the 'meat' in Hotpockets ;D . She really seems to like cantaloupe...

 

A year after that, we got another cat, Binky. He has orange, light orange, and white stripes/splotches. He is...not the brightest bulb in the box. In fact, he's quite stupid. However, he is the strangest cat you'll ever meet. He spends most of the day sleeping, but he is a bit more active at night. He always drags my clothes around. He'll go into my room, grab something from my laundry basket, and drag it down the hall meowing the entire way. He also like to do backflips...We still have him.

 

Later, one of my mom's friends moved halfway across the state. She couldn't keep her two cats because she didn't think they'd last the long drive. We took them in. They were Jinx (Fat Boy) and Spookers. Dad gave Jinx the nickname. Both of them were solid black. Things did not go well. Misty, the dominant cat in the house, did not like the 'intruders'. They fought for a long time. Out of the two new cats, Fat Boy was dominant and felt he still deserved to be in this new house. After a while, Spookers caved in to Misty, although there was still tension. Fat Boy would not budge, though. I'll finish this story later as that's where it ends chronologically.

 

Not long after Fat Boy and Spookers came, one of my mom's other friends gave us a frog. She'd had the frog for 11 years (honest) and decided she didn't want to care for it anymore. We had it for another year before it died. It was never named.

 

While we had the frog, we got two mice, Hannah and Rex. Unfortunately, they didn't last long. We would often release them to scurry around on the table. One day, we thought it'd be funny if we stuck a little fountain on the table and see if they'd drink out of it. They did, and it was funny. What we didn't know is that there was a chemical applied to the plastic to keep it water resistant. The mice died soon after.

 

My dad had found a garter snake at his work and decided to keep it for a while. It was very big, remember that.

 

Later, we replaced those mice with two new ones. I forget their names, though...I don't know the cause, but they only lasted a few months.

 

A few weeks after we got the new mice, the garter snake gave birth (I told you it was big). We didn't realise it was pregnant until we saw a cage full of little snakes with more on the way. The last snake born, we saw, was having problems. It had gotten tangled up in itself and couldn't move or even breathe. My dad tried to save it, but it was of no use. After the snakes grew up a little more to survive on their own, we released them all. While we had them, they would do a strange thing. In a corner of the cage, we had a hollowed out log. In many cases, we'd see the little baby snakes inside the log sticking their heads out making it look like a mini hydra.

 

Now then, I'm going to finish the story of Fat Boy and Spookers. We realised that they would never get along with Misty, and decided that they couldn't keep living like this. We brought them all the way to their old owner and gave them back. Unfortunately, she traded them for two ferrets. That was the worst trade ever. I'm telling you this right now: never get ferrets! They smell, they're a pain to clean up after, and they're several other nasty words I won't repeat. They were, ironically, named Rose and Daisy. It's ironic because of their main detriment: smell. There's a surgical procedure to remove certain glands from ferrets that produce the awful smell. These ferrets had had that procedure. These ferrets smelled worse than anything I'd ever smelled before. I don't know how we got rid of them; I'm just glad we got rid of them.

 

While we had the ferrets, we found a stray cat. We put up posters telling people about the cat and asking if it belonged to anyone. No one called, so we kept him. We still have him. He is all black except for one small white spot on his belly which was his namesake: Spot. Spot is my favourite cat, and I'm his favourite human. When we got him, he and Misty, of course, fought, but Spot was so grateful that he was off the streets that he didn't take long to cave. Spot isn't too strange, but he is quite playful. He's always trying to play with Misty, Binky, and the mice (he gave up on the newt :P ). Unfortunately, no one plays. Misty is too busy being snobby to play; Binky is too dumb to play, and the mice are too afraid to play. He does, however, seem to be addicted to ice cream. His favourite flavour is cookie dough (mine, too! :D ), which gets real annoying. He always tries to steal my ice cream! He's very sociable and loves to be around people, even strangers.

 

Later, my sister and her friend were stupid and bought a newt and two frogs without considering the ramifications. Her friend's parents outright refused, so we were forced to take them. The frogs didn't last long, but the newt is still going strong, slow, but strong. Asking if the newt does anything is like asking if a rock does anything. The newt is just a slippery rock that eats once in awhile. We thought it'd be funny if we named him Gingrich ;D , but (s)he is is still unnamed.

 

Later, at my mom's old job at Marquette University, she smuggled three mice out. One of the people there was doing an experiment on male mice, and told Mom to get rid of the females. Obviously, she didn't want to kill the mice, so she took them home. Being raised for generations in a lab, the mice are inherently frightful and spend most of their time hiding.

 

Just recently, we 'got' a new cat. She is also a stray. We haven't actually taken her in yet, but we are going to as soon as we check with the vet. We need to see if she has anything our other cats could catch, or if she could get anything our cats could get. See, she'd been living outside for at least two years, but just recently approached us. It's obvious she wants us to take her in, but she is an outdoor cat. It's obvious that even before she was a stray, she was still an outdoor cat. So, obviously, if we taker her in, she'd have to remain outdoor. That'd expose her to things that our cats aren't vaccinated against. She's a calico cat, but I don't know much else as we just found a couple months ago.

 

 

I know you said to post strange things, but I was bored and posted a history of our pets. :P

 

 

Edit: I forgot the tortoise! How could I forget Speedy! :P He wasn't actually ours, we were just taking care of him for awhile. My 6th grade science teacher had a tortoise and every Friday he let his students take Speedy home for the weekend. I got lucky and took Speedy home on the Friday before spring break. :) We had him for two weeks!

[Crisb92]

Dogs have owners, cats have staff.

 

My family have 2 cats, 1 dog and just recently 2 guinea pigs.

 

The tabby is called Tiger, because she has a few orange and black stripes, the ginger is called an assortment of names, ranging from Ginger to Mr Orange. The dog is called Peppa, original both because our uncle already had one called pepper and because she is black. The two guinea pigs are so new we still haven't decided on names, other than my sister who has decided on some that make me want to be violently ill.

 

They're all a bit strange, but I'm yet to meet an animal that isn't in some way, as my mum used to be a wildlife caring for Aussie animals, all of the animals we got were a bit strange, which was probably the reason we met them.

 

Chris.

[kungfubellydancer]

Wow, some of you people sound like you're describing the local zoo!

 

I forgot to mention we own two aquariums, a 55 gallon and a 20 gallon. The 20 is occupied by a single adult cichlid named Sergeant Johnson (halo fans!) because he looks like he's got a mustache, wearing camo, and is very aggressive and can be imagined as a gung-ho military man. That's why he's lone.

 

My husband and I have some pets on the waiting list, meaning, we can't get them until we move away because the rest of the family has a problem with these animals, or because my doctor recommends I avoid contact with new animals until after pregnancy, for fear of diseases. My husband wants a hamster, a snake, and a German shepherd. I don't mind the dog, but hamsters and snakes don't mix. I love snakes but I need something a little more interactive, so he suggested iguana. We'll purchase an iguana and name it Peep. Then, I want a tarantula and name it Kitty, because they are so cute and furry. Any time I go to a pet store I go straight to the reptiles section and try to handle the tarantulas, lizards and snakes at least once.

[ninja_lord666]

Wait, wait, wait...female...gamer...loves spiders...

You...you're not real!! :ohmy: You can't be!

 

 

:P

[kungfubellydancer]

Wait, wait, wait...female...gamer...loves spiders...

You...you're not real!! :ohmy: You can't be!

 

No, I'm pretty sure I am! I don't love all spiders though, just the larger ones. But in this house, when someone wants a spider exterminated and don't the have guts to do it, they call me!

 

But wouldn't a tarantula named Kitty be just the cutest thing?

[batlham]

Wait, wait, wait...female...gamer...loves spiders...

You...you're not real!! :ohmy: You can't be!

 

No, I'm pretty sure I am! I don't love all spiders though, just the larger ones. But in this house, when someone wants a spider exterminated and don't the have guts to do it, they call me!

 

But wouldn't a tarantula named Kitty be just the cutest thing?

If only you were not married... :( LOL

 

Right now I just have a ferret...one that NEVER bites. I have had prairie dogs..they were loveable, spiney mice..they were cool...and when I was very young I raised hamsters..learned genitics with them... and roller pigeons.

[kungfubellydancer]

My husband has a taste for ferrets but I just like to play with them in the store, that's about it. As you can probably tell my husband and I both love animals and it might be hard to resist buying lots of them :confused: I suppose we'll set up a rule where, should one animal die we can purchase another of equal size/needs, and limit the pet count to, say, 3 at a time. When my husband was a young boy he loved collecting animals and keeping them in his room, ranging from bats to rats to snakes. I have a photo of him holding a snake by its tail when he was only 2! It must not have been poisonous or his parents wouldn't have let him do that.....But when I go to the pet store I love holding the teeny corn snakes they have. They are just irresistibly cute with their little heads and big eyes! I have to resist purchasing one right then and there :pinch: