How Did You Pick Your Pet?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Both my 2 cats and my one dog all came from our local, underfunded, dirty, but oh-so-necessary pound. With my dog, I went to the pound with my 4 children, and they all fell in love with the very first dog they saw, the one in the very first cage you see when you open the door. This dog was ‘featured’ with stars around her cage and a big sign up. That’s what they do with promising dogs who are almost all up on their time and about to be euthanized. I insisted on not just choosing the fist dog we saw, and so we went all around that pound and saw hundreds of dogs. But our minds kept going back to that dog in the first cage.

We took her out and took her to a little getting-to-know-you area and she just seemed like the perfect dog. Calm yet friendly and very gentle with the kids.

And now we’ve had her for 5 years and she is just the best dog. She has almost no bad habits… doesn’t jump up, dig, bark unnecessarily, or anything. I can’t imagine why anyone would have given her to the pound. Everyone loves her and all the neighborhood kids think she is just the best dog ever.

22

Mystery adopted us. She just showed up on our back porch one day, six months old and very hungry.

Tikva’s more complicated. I had my heart set on a calico, preferably a kitten that might get along with Mystery. and then I was at Petco looking at cats and trying to volunteer, and then someone sent me to someone else… I don’t remember the exact sequence of events, but I ended up with a sweet torbie kitten with a swollen face. She still had a week’s worth of antibiotics to go when I took her home. I squirted the medicine into her mouth every day, and the swelling went down, and it turned out that she had a normal symmetrical face. And I became friends with the Incredible Cat Lady, founder of her own rescue group and mother to over thirty cats and a giant dog. Two dogs, at the time. And that’s when she isn’t at work investigating arsons. But I digress.
Mystery didn’t fall for the fluffy kitten ploy, and to this day they still hate each other. But they’re both sweet girls.

23

I spent 22 years longing for a dog and speculating in detail what my ultimate dog would be like. Married and living in our own home, I saw a puppy on a magazine cover and went That’s it! Bought the magazine, found that the dog was a Shiba Inu, read everything (I almost mean that) on the internet about the breed. The blogs I read basically said that only a crazy person would ever get one. I thought, perfect. Then I looked at the magazine again and saw that one of the two or three breeders in the country was in my area, and e-mailed her with a profile of myself saying why I would be a good Shiba person. I basically gave her a CV as detailed as one I’d give to someone I was trying to get to hire me. She e-mailed back and was very nice, and maybe 6 months later while I was making a pot of mince for dinner she phoned me to say that one of her bitches was pregnant. I burned the mince. The litter turned out to be 4 puppies, 3 girls and a boy, and I’d already decided I wanted a girl (Don’t know why, just one of those things). So there were 3 to choose from and I set my heart on one. She was a brighter orange colour than the others and had the nicest face. When they were older she licked my hands while the others used them as chew toys. But then the breeder decided that she was going to keep one of the girls herself, and she was trying to choose between MY puppy and another one. It was nailbitingly tense for weeks, but she eventually decided on the other one!:smiley:
So I got my baby pup and she’s four this year. I can’t imagine ever not having a Shiba. I hesitated over posting this story because I know on some sites this would lead to a pile-on for buying from a breeder :eek: but I hope you guys can at least accept my choice even if you don’t agree with it. One thing for sure, no one could say it was an impulse buy!:wink:

24

I’ve generally found that any cat that curls up in your lap and purrs up a storm will make a great pet.

25

My daughter desperately wanted a dog. She discovered that the owners of the place where she painted pottery had a dog who was very unhappy about being left alone. Since my wife works at home, we arranged to try him out. (I used to be allergic, so it was unclear if it would work.) He went with us, never looked back, and stayed for 13 years.

Our dog now was a guide dog puppy we raised, our fourth. After a year and a quarter we sent her back for final training, she got picked as a breeder, so we got her back. Her breeding days are now over, so she’s ours. Our doggie house guest from now until December is a golden retriever guide dog stud from Australia.

26

We didn’t choose them - they chose us. When we adopted the girls, I just sat down in the middle of the floor at the rescue shelter. Havoc ran right over and jumped into my lap. When I stood up, her sister Pixel batted my ear from the kitty condo, saying “Hey, what about me?” Fast-forward 4 years. The semi-feral cat under the house has kittens. One of them climbs up my leg and settles on my chest with a purr. And so we are 5.

27

There wasn’t that much picking involved. Someone abandoned a litter of kittens on the subway platform, and by the time I was going to work, there was only one little guy who came running to me as soon as he saw me.

At the time, we lived in an apartment that didn’t allow pets, and my husband “hated cats.” So I explained to both husband and landlord that we were only keeping the kitten for a day or two while I found a permanent home for him.

After 24 hours, husband declared that no one else was qualified to take care of this kitten, who was clearly superior to other cats in intelligence, charisma, and general personality, and thus exempt from the hating cats thing. :dubious: The landlord also became very fond of the kitten.

One funny thing is that the subway booth attendant at my station was always very mean and gruff with me (and I presume with everyone), but after she saw me take the kitten home, she was like my best friend from then on.

The cat is now 10, and sprawled out under my chair.

28

First cat, I don’t remember where I got him. Second cat came as an adult with the house my Dad bought. Third cat was abandoned as a kitten in our yard (and those who abandon kittens deserve a permanent spot in the 10th level of Hell), fourth and fifth cats were a birthday gift as a pair of kittens.

Sixth cat was adopted as an adult from a private shelter, he had been adopted from there previously then found wandering. He seemed very calm and laid back and liked being petted. Seventh cat was adopted as a young adult from a different shelter, she had been adopted and returned (idiots! she’s a great cat!). We spent a few minutes with her then seemed to simultaneously decide that she was The Cat.

29

Our cats, on the other hand, are a mixed bunch. The oldest we got from a pet shop when I was a teenager, more or less simply because he was pretty. He’s a lovely cream-caramel cushion, and is completely my mother’s cat. Oh, yes, that’s the rest of the story. Remember how I wanted a dog for 22 years and could only get one once I moved out? Well, after two years of marriage my husband and I moved back in with my parents, originally because of a sudden crisis of homelessness but we stayed because we all like the arrangement. Moved back with the dog. And my mom loves her to bits.:smack:

Anyway, that’s my mom’s cat, Frodo. Cat number 2, Parsley, came from my sister. She’s a vet and always has packs of cats and dogs that she rescues, and at this point she had one more than she could cope with. So we took Parsley (the rest of the litter, still with my sister, are Sage, Thyme and Rocket), a tall and thin mostly white calico who purrs like a motorbike and is Frodo’s best friend.

Then came my baby kitten, Katala, also a pet shop buy but this time on account of her sparkling personality. She looks a lot like Malleus, Incus, Stapes’ Tikva, only missing about half of her tail. I think her mother must have bitten it when she was tiny. She’s a strange, strange cat. She wouldn’t let us out of her sight for two weeks after we got her, and she still follows me around for most of the day.

Cat number 4 walked into our garage when we were living in our old place. She meowed loudly to tell us she was there, and then proceeded to continue meowing loudly all night. I slept on the bed in the spare room with her. She did not sleep. She turned around and around and around, rubbing against my hand to make me scratch her, and meowed. Loudly. All night. By the morning, my lonely husband did not like her. So I called her Mika, and told my husband that she’d spent the whole night yowling “why don’t you like me, why don’t you like me” at him. We tried to track down her owners with posters, ads, postings on all the lost and found sites, but to no avail. We took her to the vet, who found she had a microchip but that the number was not registered to anyone. So we sent her to my parents, and later joined her there. She doesn’t care much for anyone except my dad, whom she adores with a violent passion. She still meows loudly, but only every time she sees him…

30

I wanted something that farted and snorted louder than me.

I got a pug.

It worked.

31

After my last move ( out of a no-pets apartment ), I had decided to get a cat again at some vague point in the future. My last one had died after 17 years and I had been without a pet for around three, so I was in that sort of mood.

Meanwhile a photojournalist buddy of mine who was aware of this had gone out to photograph some minor fishing lure magnate out in the CA central valley. While he was there, said magnate showed him this [dirty little kitten](http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff114/Timur_photo/cats/PrinceRupert.jpg) that had wandered onto his semi-rural property that morning, trailing obediantly after a neighbor's pet Chihuahua. He was completely blase about the guy's big hound dog and in fact he has been completely convinced [he's a dog](http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff114/Timur_photo/cats/DSC_0036.jpg) [ever since](http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff114/Timur_photo/cats/IMG_3969Large.jpg). My buddy snapped that first dirty kitten photo and sent it to me, regaling me with stories of how neat this rambunctious little kitten was and I shrugged my shoulders and said I'd take him. Upon hearing this the fishing lure magnate pulled out a money roll and peeled off a $100 bill, saying that I should be sure and have him neutered. So I was paid $100 to take a stray kitten :D.

He turned out to be quite a character and I named him grandiloquently after Prince Rupert of the Rhine ( who was never without his large pet poodle, “Boy”, such that some of his Puritan opponents accused it of being a witch’s familiar ). But he was super rambunctious ( at over three years old, he still acts like a big kitten - my above buddy calls him “rambunctor” ) and was driving me nuts.

So I went and got him a new brother at the local humane society. Given how insanely rambunctious Rupert was, I went for the calmest, most unflappable half-grown kitten I could find. I also wanted a black cat after hearing how hard they are to adopt out because pople are apparently still insanely superstitious in this day and age. So I ended up with this mellow guy they had used to “cat test” each new dog admitted to the shelter. They get along great. Really.

I of course named the second cat Oliver Cromwell after Prince Rupert’s nemesis, as seemed fitting. And he cost me $100 to adopt ( neuter/shots/etc. ). So in the end I broke even ;).

32

My whole family has a history of pets picking us out, rather than the other way around.

-Growing up, my dad came home with a dog that was making tracks through the fresh cement <my dad’s an electrician, and this was a new place going up> and hid behind my dad when the cement guys tried to shoo it off.

-Another puppy came home with my mom because she crawled up on my mom’s shoe. My mom has always been 100 percent against pets <4 kids; who needs another one?!> but she had no choice with this little guy.

-Our two cats came because one crawled up my sweetie…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallll the way up my sweetie, wouldn’t let go. His sister came along too, so he wouldn’t be lonely. They are awesome.

-My sister and I stopped at a Circle K for coffee at 4.30 in the morning on the way to a c onstruction job. Early. Tired. Cranky. Needing coffee. Empty out; cold and slightly snowy and miserable.

We’re the only car in the lot. We walk in…right past a pot-bellied pig wearing a shirt saying “Life’s Short: Bite Hard”. We both kept walking into the store, neither one of us said a word until we got back outside, looked to the left, and yep, there he still was. Not a sleep-dep hallucination, though we both still looked to see if the other had seen it, too.
He grunted at us.
He came home with us. :stuck_out_tongue:
My sister’s husband woke up to a pig running around the house, and went back to bed, figuring HE must still be dreaming.

33

Heh. I wanted a dog. I wanted a dog that I would call Clover.

Then I went to find a dog, and this tiny puppy *ran *to us and instantly stole our hearts. It was love at first sight. Choose? Choice? There was no choice.

34

Historically, all my pets have been castaways. Usually, a friend of my mother would give her an unwanted pet, and they all ended up under my care. The last two had such horrible behavior, I even gave up on them (an orange tabby and a chihuahua, both of them had severe biting issues.)

The last group of throaways was a set of 5 kittens. Knowing my mother’s fickle nature, I didn’t bother bonding with them. Sure enough, she grabbed 3 and dumped them at the humane society.

After I got married, my wife had some maturity issues about pets (even she will admit this now.) If the animal made one mistake, they were banished from the house. Also, rules would be set nearly by the hour to address behavior, and the rules would always be accompanied by an ultimatum: either the animal stops doing X or they would have to go. Good luck getting a cat to stop shedding.

Therefore, the last pet I picked I knew had to be too beautiful to overcome my wife’s immaturity. I was thinking about getting a beagle, but the only ones available in my area were Australian, and thus about 3X larger than average beagles (they looked more like bloodhounds.) I was thinking about a jack russell terrier, but then a golden retriever became available. She cost $800, but it was probably the best $800 I ever spent.

However, the first two years were a nightmare. She would tear up important papers (once my paycheck) and chew everything and anyone. I was told that they mature at 2 years of age, but I wouldn’t have believed this one would mature so much so fast. However, what’s important is that my theory was correct and my wife put a lot more effort into raising this dog than our previous dogs. She came from a culture where animals weren’t considered part of the family, but once she came to love the dog, she realized how unreasonable she was before.

Now, she wants to get a(nother) cat. Personally, I want a parakeet or parrot.

35

I rescued my beagles and my cat from the Humane Society. you can look up what is available on line. then go down and pick them up. about 100 bucks each.

36

Angel is a shelter pup. We went to the shelter to sign our daughter up for camp. We made her wait for a long time for an animal: she had begged and pleaded ever since she was a wee tyke. But she was old enough, and had done the prerequisite research, so while we were at the shelter we went to have a look at the puppies.

Angel was the first one we saw. She was so cute, and so little, and she just stood up on the side of the pen and looked at us. There was an adorable white puppy in the same pen, but our eyes just locked onto hers. We picked her up and took her to the family room. Our daughter and I played with her for a while, and my husband came in and out. Our son was absolutely terrified, which was one reason we hadn’t gotten an animal before then. He had never been around a dog, and we were convinced that he needed a chance to be around one. While we were in the family room, Angel curled up, laid her head on my foot, and went to sleep. That was it. She was ours.

Now, her and our son are best friends. She’s still in the chewy puppy phase, and he is the only one she doesn’t try to use as a chew toy. Our daughter loves her, but Angel has become mostly his puppy. But she comes running to attack me when I get home from work, and I just adore that.

The white puppy was of the same litter as Angel: we got a call from the shelter vet that this pup and another from that litter had tested positive for Parvo. He told us the symptoms and advised us to watch Angel closely. They believe we got her out of the shelter just in time, because she did not develop any symptoms. That was the roughest week in a long time.

37

I was looking at a litter of teeny kittens. Most of them ignored me but one gray tabby baby with a big head wobbled over to the edge of the box and stared up at me. I picked him up to look at him and he climbed up my arm, perching on my shoulder like a parrot, chewing on my hair. That was cat number 1.

Number 2 ambushed me at my Mother’s house one weekend. He practically demanded that I take him home with me so I did.

Number 3 apparently teleported in from another dimension one cold day in January outside my brother’s apartment. I never saw where he came from as he flung himself at my ankles. He ran in front of me down the sidewalk, looking back every so often to see if I was following. I gave him the slip at the corner and ran inside my brother’s building before he saw where I went. About an hour later my brother came in from work and guess who came in with him? I gave up and took the little blighter home.

Number 4 showed up in the company of some friends one Saturday afternoon. They’d rescued her from the engine compartment of a luxury car and knew I had recently lost number 2 so thought I needed another one. She’s gorgeous and fiercely independent but has never really fit in well with the rest, alas.

Number 5 came into my life because I was missing number 1, my gray tabby. Number 1 had been my snuggle cat and always slept with me. None of the others were like that so my sister determined I needed another snuggler. She was fostering kittens at the time and came by with a female kitten she’d thought would be just right for me. It was love at first sight-with the OTHER kitten that she was keeping for herself, not the one she’d picked for me. However she went along with fate and 5 was indeed a snuggle bunny.

Number 6 was a stray that I fostered along with her brother for the local animal shelter. Overall I fostered around fifty kittens total for the shelter and to this day I have absolutely no idea why this one stuck but she did. She’s my little girl and I wouldn’t take anything for her.

38

I’ve only had two cats. I chose neither of them.

Cat #1, Molly, wasn’t exactly chosen by me. I loved cats as a kid, begged and begged for a cat, and never got a cat. Instead, my mom did the escalating “if you can take care of this, then maybe you can have a cat…” trick, and I worked my way up from Sea-Monkeys to an ant farm to an aquarium to a cage of homicidal and suicidal hamsters. In the mean time, I played with the stray cats in our apartment complex. My mom ended up working with a crazy cat lady, the kind of lady who took home every stray she found, took as a sign that the horny male cat stalking her harem of female cats was “meant to be another cat for the household!” and wore cat sweaters, made cat magnets, had cat pictures around her cubicle. She had this one newly adopted cat who just was too shy, hid in a room while her house full of cats romped and played. The cat was a runt who had been bottle-nursed past kittenhood, and just couldn’t fit in with the others. The lady asked my mom if she knew anyone who could take the cat. The last of my hamsters had guillotined itself a few months earlier in its exercise wheel, so I was pet-free…

For my 8th birthday, I spent a day with this cat (named by the cat lady after the newly-born daughter of Meredith Baxter-Birney, Mollie… a long story in and of itself), and the cat was purring, playful, and happy when the day was over. She chose me, and Molly was mine. She ended up being my best friend for 24 more years, finally having to be put down a little bit after my 32nd birthday. I may not have chosen her, but it seems like we were chosen to be a pair.

I never really recovered from Molly’s death, and didn’t take friends up on their offers to take in cats or kittens afterwards. A couple of years later, I was heading to work on a dangerously cold, icy and snowy night, and opened my door. A pretty grey and white kitten simply walked in, sat down, and started licking the ice crystals off of her fur. I had to get going, so I poured a bowl of Molly’s left-over stale kibble, set down a dish of water, and went to work. I came back in the morning, to find the bowls empty, and the kitty asleep in my bed. I climbed into bed to sleep, and she crawled on me and slept on my chest. I was adopted. Quinne’s still with me, a little overweight, and still happy to be indoors at all times. I see her identically-colored cousins outdoors all the time, and they’re feral cats who hate humans… I have no idea why she chose me, but she’s my kitty now.

39

All of our pets except for one were gifts from relatives or friends. The one exception was adopted but it was my mom who went out and adopted (she wasn’t planning to adopt; it just happened). As a little kid I was too busy playing with the dog to wonder why she decided to adopt (we already had a dog).

40

Samrys was a wedding present to my husband, who was always talking about his childhood pets and how much he wanted a cat. She was the tiniest kitty in the kitten room at the Cats Protection Society, but she was running up and swatting the bigger kitties. She was fearless and beautiful, grey and white with kitten blue eyes. My husband cried like a child when I brought her home.

Patches was Samrys’s pet - I finally got a work visa and we decided we couldn’t leave Samrys alone. Patches is so beautiful, a tortie white girl with no brain whatsoever, but huge golden eyes. She is the sweetest, must trusting kitty I have ever seen, and also a Cats Protection rescue.

Charlieis the household accidental adoption. My workmate (note, I do not say friend) was on about how she needed to “get rid of the kid’s cat”. She claims that although she moved in with her boyfriend, she was coming back to her apartment to feed Charlie. I said I’d take her to Cats Protection but when I saw her, starving, double-thick tortie black fur that felt like terrier fur from malnutrition, I just took her home. I got her spayed. I couldn’t touch her for more than a year, and she gorged herself on whatever food we had. Now she’s my special girl, we have her weight under control again (she’s tiny, about 9lbs), and she loves me best of all. She also dislikes being photographed!

All the Princess Girls are seven years old, thereabouts.

But we wanted a dog, and so we checked the RSPCA website. My husband saw a floopy eared brindle puppy, but I said no way would he still be there, we weren’t going to make it for couple of weeks - but he was, and we brought 14lb Yoshi (named for the dragon on the Mario games, his ears look like the wings) home on my husband’s lap in the back seat. He’s 5 now. He is lovely and sooky, and a very sweet boy. He’s 70lbs. He’s dumb as a bag of hammers, but without a mean bone in his body.

Jasmine came from Monica’s Doggie Rescue, a charity I support. I saw her online as a featured pup, and I thought she was * beautiful*, but I thought surely she’d be taken. Some 10 months later I was making another online donation, and she was still there! I talked my husband (but we have three cats and a dog, we do not need another…oh, all right!) into going out there. Turns out Jasmine is picky about other dogs. We has brought Yoshi with us. They took to each other immediately - she’s smaller, about 45lbs, but mostly pit with (we think) some beagle (the bark, the size, the marking) and loves to play-wrestle, and so does Yoshi. So we brought her home. She’s two.