Where did your pet(s) come from?

After the game I went to Jimbo's to get a couple extra libations and bask in the glow of the White Sox victory. There was this really loud-mouthed woman there yammering on about 'blah blah blah sox suck etc etc'. So I just started to trash talk back to her --- and, she SPIT on me! unreal. I'm pretty sure that remains the only time in my entire adult life that anyone has ever spit on me. Well, I'm a gentlemen, so of course I turned the other cheek and went about my business.

Anyway, long story short -- couple hours later I'm sitting there on the El platform waiting for the train to take me home, and out of the corner of my eye I see this girl walk on to the platform... turns out it's the very same women with whom I'd had the altercation, and now she's cradling this little kitten in her arms. So, we get to talking and she says that as she ways leaving Jimbo's she sees this little kitten in the street (and this is at like 2 AM in the morning) and picked it up. She says that she herself is actually allergic to cats, but that she felt so sorry for this thing that she had to grab it, and was hoping to pass it off on one of her friends.

So the train comes, and we get it on it together, and as my stop approaches, I'm all like "fuck it, give it to me, I'll take the cat!!" and so I did. And I promised to take care of it. And I have! And he's a great cat. I love him lots.

http://users.rcn.com/rschrade/lapcat.jpg

Tina the cat came from the cats and dogs home. She was a kitten at the time, and my dad said he picked her by going to a load of kittens and seeing which one would come over to him first. The unfriendly kittens were all put down.

We had succession of Jack Russells wneh I was younger who kept arriving and disappearing of to farms with astonishing regularity. Amazing.

I was won over by her aggressive attitude, and I decided to take her home. I carried her home in a hat. She is now fifteen, and she still has an attitude. She's really bossy, but also affectionate. She's perfect for me.

I like this image. :-)

Linus and Killick are our remaining cats, and Linus just had his nadgers off yesterday. He is now compensating for his ball-less state by mounting Killick at ten minute intervals. No-one is entertained by this.

Beckett, the oldest, belonged to a friend of mine. She moved out of her apartment into somewhere she couldn't have cats (why? beats me) and left three behind at her old place outside on the street. Yes, this is negligent and crappy. Someone took one and I rescued the other two, gave one to my parents, and kept him. She promptly moved elsewhere, got two other cats, then got rid of those, then got a dog.

Zippy, the oldest of the three cats, was found mewing around the mailboxes of my wife's coworker's apartment complex. He was about 6 weeks old. The coworker brought the kitten to work and talked my wife into taking him in. Frosty, the middle cat, adopted from the Oxford (MS) animal shelter, Nov. 1997. Harvey, the youngest and def. most aggressive, adopted from the Redding (CA) shelter, late 2000.

After Tracy passes away and a suitable period of mourning, we're thinking about adopting a greyhound.

he turns 13 this year! and to think, he used to fit in the palm of my hand.

But I like this thread.

They are also, contrary to popular belief, usually very good with other dogs, and cats.

I've always had a soft spot for the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. We had one for a while when I was a kid, but we gave it to my granddad to mind while we were having some building done, and then we hadn't the heart to take it back. He used to feed her porridge every morning and would peg her ears up on top of her head with an old-fashioned clothes peg to stop them from trailing in the dish.

We got them both from a Maryland humane society: Gus when he was a few weeks old, with a sister from the same litter who was nearly his twin and who we later had to take back. They were the two who ran right over to my mom when she crouched down to look in their cage. Since we had two of them, and they were not really weaned yet, and my mom was on some kind of "so the kid wants a dog? Let her take care of them by herself, it'll be a lesson" thing, I was trying to do everything for them and couldn't handle two at once. So we took Gus's sister back. My mom and I have always regretted this since Gus was such a great dog. We ended up getting our other dog (Woofie) about a year later, also from the humane society, and he was already a year old. He was a purebred Australian Shepherd and had been neglected by his previous owners (kept chained in the yard all the time alone), probably because of a small mark on one of his teeth that made him unsuitable as a show dog.

The next day we put up signs and ads in the paper and called the SPCA and stuff. We also got her groomed and took her to the vet. Like a week later this guy calls and describes her to a T. I was upset but figured the guy deserves his dog back.

The cocksucker doesn't show up for three days.

I immediately recognize him as one of the dealers from the bar. I offer him a hundred bucks for the dog as I really don't trust a drug dealer in New Orleans to treat a pit bull right. He grumbles a little bit, saying he paid 400 or whatever but agrees, saying his girl is having a baby and doesn't want a dog around anyway. So woohoo! Ellie has lived with me ever since.

She's very skittish so I don't think the jackass I got her from treated her very well. We named her Elise Snorlax Parker because A) Elise is a nice name but PJ Harvery ruined it for people B) she slept all the damn time when we first got her--I think wandering the streets for two or three weeks is kind of tiring and C) that's my last name.

My dog rocks. The end.

http://216.218.248.153/datastore/ca/57/b/ca5797382610bd20688f68abc775dd75.jpg

Roxy (my current bulldog) was given to my same sister three years ago after her then owner had to move. Roxy was 6 months old then. I love her. Holy terror.

I'd been thinking about getting a pet for a while, but I'd never gone through with it. Since everything was so different and topsy-turvy in my life anyway, I decided to go for it.

I picked him up the next day at a coffee shop, where said friend met me with him in a carrier. He was tiny, and his right eye wouldn't open as wide as the other at the time, so I figured he would have eye problems for the rest of his life. I was feeling rather fragile myself, so I figured I could handle it. It corrected itself later on, though. He's wonderful, affectionate and surprisingly trusting for a former stray. His only bad habit is begging for food, which he probably picked up as a stray and I (ignorantly) encouraged at first. He could fit in my hand.

He is about a year old now. I named him Ted after Ted Hughes, who wrote poetry about animals and nature and stuff. He is totally gay for my boyfriend's cat.

My sister's pit was found in a boxcar when he was about eight months old. That is the age when they train young pits to fight and test their 'gameness'. He didn't have his ears clipped yet, but he was chained in this boxcar, all cut up and starving. So he was being prepared to be a fighter.

He was rescued by a Chicago cop and eventually ended up in a no-kill shelter that mainly houses pits.

Here is a page about Mack (I am in the second pic, holding him). As you can see, he is just the cutest, and he is sweet and obedient as can be - it's hard to believe he was almost a fighter.

There are never enough pictures of our Tracy on the interweb:

The kitten slept on my pillow every night for a week. When I was in the flat in the evenings, it would sit on my shoulder and suck my earlobe. It would jump out at guests and be carried around on their shoes. I put up signs around the locality, and the day before my boyfriend was due to come back, a lady rang to ask if she could have it, as she her old cat had died and she was lonely without it. She came the next day, cried with happiness at how cute the kitten was, showed me photos of where the kitten would live (looked nice), gave me an apple tart and some cream as thanks, and left. Then my boyfriend came home.

I hope the lady and the kitten are still happy.

Zero: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/lunacee/zero.jpg
Zoe: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/lunacee/zoe.jpg

Ralph "Balls" Callahan was acquired recently - search the archives, there's a thread about him. He showed up and wouldn't leave, so we took him in. He's a bit of a crank and a bully, but he's just bursting with personality.

We love our dogs.

Cat from a family friend, she was the daughter of a wild cat.

a lot of the dog owners here live in brownstones (or two-family row houses, farther out in the outer boroughs).

Enzo is from a pound in Jersey. And has taken up residence behind the couch.

I heart Enzo.