Fuzzy, furry, finned & feathered friends.

(Please note: if you are reading this blog for the first time, you need to start with the post entitled " The reason")

Blog entry preceding this one is "Their first date occurred after their engagement". 






We have had a long list of fuzzy, furry, finned or feathered creatures during our time together as husband and wife. None yet have gone the distance and we don't really know why...but for your amusement here is a list of their entrances and exits from our lives.

Lily has had pets all throughout her childhood and adult life. J.J was denied a childhood of puppies and kittens.

INSANITY DEFINITION: Repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different result (keep this in mind for when we get a dog).


Fergus (Lily's choice): was our first pet as husband and wife. Not really a pet, so much as a canary who didn't sing. Fergus was a boy. And me being a big girl's blouse, felt that Fergus looked lonely. 
Lurch (J.J's choice): our second canary and who we were completely assured by the pet store owners was a male as well, (as we insisted that we did not want babies) joined the Bachelor Pad Cage.
Their meeting was amicable at first, Lurch tended to sing at times yet Fergus still remained silent. A few weeks went by when things started getting a little rough in the cage. J.J's bird was attacking my bird (little fucker). It was then that J.J noticed that the attacks weren't violent, the attacks were actually two birds having sex. 
We had homosexual birds, not that there is anything wrong with that - but the sex looked quite vicious. Furious at the pet store where Lurch was bought, I demanded my money back for selling me a female canary when I specifically asked for a male. The owner, looked at me dead pan, and asked " Who's on top?" I replied that Lurch was on top. "Then he's your male, and the other is your female".


Oh.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh - Bloody Fergus!!!


Well time went on, the sex continued and the thing we didn't want to have happen - happened. Fergus was pregnant. Not only that, her little opening couldn't get rid of the egg and sadly she passed away from the effort. Lurch lasted another month or two and then he passed on as well.So much for the feathered variety - time to try out the finned area.


We started with Basil - the Siamese fighting fish. 


BASIL:- We did quite well with Basil for a time. In a bowl with some greenery. Fed him occasionally.


Having success with Basil we bought a small tank. Inside we place some lion-head goldfish and a koi. Well the lion-head goldfish didn't even last long enough for us to name them as it seemed that we had too powerful of a filter that pretty much blew them around the tank.
The Koi however, was tough, slightly insane and suicidal. The amount of times the koi jumped out of the tank was ridiculous. J.J once found him under the book shelf one afternoon covered in strands of my hair and dust.  After that leap, he didn't last long either.


Soon after, Basil's vase broke and while he was rescued, the trauma of it all did him in.


It was at this time we moved to Queensland from New South Wales. Both having enough of the fish and birds, we moved a step up and tried a cat.


Now to be fair our reasoning for having a cat was to be my surrogate child. We had been trying for a baby for about a two years at this stage and my mothering needs were spilling out all over the place. I needed something cute to love and since my fallopian tubes and ovaries were on strike at this point something furry had to step in.


Us, being us, insisted that the cat be black ( as we wanted an evil minion to go with our evil persona's). So, off to the RSPCA, where we rescued a male moggy which we named Nemesis. Nemi for short but this left us with the opportunity to get a second cat later on, to which we would call Arch - so putting two and two together, we would have an Arch-Nemesis living in the house with us. 
Nemi was an awesome cat, lasting over two years. And not long after we were finally pregnant with Arwyn. Once we moved from a rental property into our own first property, J.J felt that it was time to add to our family and to get our first dog. I insane with pregnancy hormones looked at Nemi and said " Yes, perhaps it is time to get him a friend". 

   Nemi with Arwyn.
          
Introducing "Hunting Seassen" (taken from the Asterix's comics). Hunting Seassen was the biggest, dopiest, GREAT DANE dog ever!!!! 
Seriously I don't know what I was thinking for allowing that giant into our home but J.J gave me the puppy dog eyes, and told me the story in which his parents denied him a puppy as a child and my heart just melted - I blame you both Mum & Dad in-law.
Well, Hunting Seassen and Nemi didn't get along - though more on the part of Nemi, the dog was quite happy to play with the cat but would often earn a swiped nose for his efforts.
In this time Hunting Seassen went from medium size dog to Elephant sized dog. And because J.J was working so much, it was up to me to take care of the dopey bugger. I tried, I really, really tried, however even at one year old Hunting Seassen could easily put his front paws on my shoulders while standing and I was 5 foot 11 in height. 

He kept knocking me over and I had had enough. And so he was taken to a farm to roam free - it was actually a farm with a new family.


Soon after we decided to start trying for a second child. Again my uterus said a "Fuck you!" and it was here that a second surrogate child was bought in the shape of a kitten. Given the name "Arch" the female kitten instantly had all our love - with the exception of Nemi who was bitter and twisted that a female kitten had been brought into HIS home.

We tried diligently to introduce the two, hoping Nemi would accept  Arch, but he didn't. He expressed his hatred for Arch by finding where I was sitting, and chose to pee on my beloved writing folder filled with all my childhood stories I had written, that happened to be placed right beside me on the piano stool at the time. J.J was very angry about this and put the cat outside. That was the last we ever saw of Nemi, as he never came back.
So we had Arch as our last remaining pet - and then J.J. got the cancer diagnosis, and looked at me with those big blue puppy dog eyes that he has, he may have even whimpered a little and said that there was a breeder of English Pointer dogs on the magic mile and so we got Havoc.

Havoc lived up to her name - she dug the backyard, she jumped the high fences; in her excitement to have company in the backyard she would jump all over me and despite trying every tactic I knew, she just always had me in tears in frustration. As J.J's cancer got worse and my workload increased with both a day and night job, I just couldn't care for her as much as what she deserved and so another family adopted her for us.

Arch herself had a good run...by our standards, but this time Arch who would often bring me her kills as trophies, left me a trophy that in turn bit back -  A brown snake....very poisonous in Australia, who just happened to live in our front /backyard.

At this point in time, I had had enough of pets. Until May of 2011 where J.J once again talked me into having pets. So as it stands, we have two female cats, rescued from the RSPCA, Dr. Seuss and Tinkerbell, bought from the same cage  who are just as therapeutic for Arwyn, J.J and I as what this blog is becoming... 


Though I could do without the black one eating my hair while I watch TV.

J.J.:


Lily pretty much got it right in this edition. Except I thought Lurch came first and he lasted with us until we were living in East Gosford. He died while the workmen were rendering the balustrade. 
Nemesis was bought for Lily as a substitute for us not having any luck in having kids. And we had some very good memories of him taking to Arwyn and could always be found asleep in her crib or in her dresser. Like all good cats he was aloof until he wanted affection and attention and would run and hide from company.


Huntingseassen - oh what a dog. Yes, I'll admit he was too much dog for Lily to look after as well as looking after Arwyn while I lived at work. He wasn't destructive, but was just so big, clumsy and stupid that he couldn't help but break things. Yes he would practically knock you over, but he was just excited to have a playmate. Despite his size, Arwyn had him under her thumb even at the age of one. She would come to the back door to his play area and say "Sit! Sit!" whilst waving her hand up and down, mimicking Lily and I, and he would in fact sit or lay down in front of her.


Havoc - I'll admit we rushed into Havoc. We didn't know quite how sick and tired I was going to get initially and we just couldn't look after the terror. 


I'll happily admit now to being a cat person and I think Lily admits to being one now as well. Cats look after themselves practically, leave you alone until they want attention, and most importantly groom themselves. Imagine, if you can, trying to get a Great Dane into a mobile dog wash. (Lily: We hired someone to wash the Great Dane, Arwyn would have been one at the time and while she and I watched with her in my arms, Arwyn would cackle with laughter at every failed attempt by the dog washer to get this horse into the back of her dog-washing unit).




The blog entry that follows is " The Ghost of Christmas Past".