PETS!!!

[Ieyasu]

...I guess whoever gave us that dog shoulda warned us beforehand the breed is keh-razy.

I never owned anything but mutts, (the setter was my parents' choice) pedigree animals always seem to have some kind of problem you need to be aware of.

Although that said I'd like a Husky. There's something about wolfish dogs.

[Bagheera]

Pets, eh? Growing up, I had many. Now, I have none. It got to be to hard to handle after awhile. But as to pets I have had:

Mammals: two dogs, two rabbits (angora and lop), a few hamsters (dumb as rocks), several rats (bets pets EVER!). Mice on occasion, but never for very long. I Always wanted a ferret, but they were illegal in Cali when I was growing up. The angora rabbit thought dogs were suitable mating options; the dogs were not amused, and were in fact rather frightened.

Birds: Numerous parakeets, cockatiels, and finches, plus two lovebirds. Cockatiels are the only ones that lasted very long; my mom still has a few, though none are original.

Herps: a water dragon, a couple of water snakes, and a box turtle. I seem to recall we had a smaller lizard as well, but I was awfully young then so the details are fuzzy. We were told the water dragon was a vegetarian and that it would live perhaps a year. Turns out it was very much a carnivore and lived some twelve years in our care.

Fish: Lots of freshwater fish, nothing terribly noteworthy.

I think that's it. We had a zoo growing up, but eventually everything died off and it got to kind of suck. Between that the long hours at my current job I wound up saying "fuck it" and no longer do pets. But they were fun while they lasted.

[Ieyasu]

Cockatiels

Tbh it was having a cockatiel that put me off keeping birds. Before that I always wanted some kind of birds, then we ended up owning one (cockatiel) because I found one in a tree in the garden with a cat a few feet away trying to get at it. It was already tame and jumped onto my hand so we got a cage for it.

The start of the nightmare.

This animal bit me all the time, and its "song" drove me nuts. Whenever it was out of the cage (I used to let it out for some exercise) it would attack my water dragon when he was out for some exercise too. Like, just land on his back and try to remove his crest. Then it bonded with my father and started hating on everyone but him. I think it tried to hump him as well.

Then it laid eggs and got even crazier.

More than once I wish I'd left it to that cat.

A few years later I got a job in a pet store and looking after the birds was the worst. I have more scars from them than anything else. Especially the lovebirds.

Safe to say I'm not a bird person. Might have even put me off dinosaurs.

[Bagheera]

Tbh it was having a cockatiel that put me off keeping birds.

Cockatiels are a handful, but they have distinct personalities which makes them interesting. One of our first was named Tito, and he was the strongest and most well-adjusted of the bunch; we trained him, but he was strong-willed and more-or-less did what he wanted. Another was very fragile; we named her "HH", short for "Happy Hooker", because she'd hook up with any male in the cage. She laid a bunch of eggs, but none ever hatched. Another was named Simon. He was very meek, extremely gentle -- he'd never bite hard unless he was really scared. And then there was Frank, who was . . . Frank. He was kinda boring, but at least he wasn't damaged. There were others -- Matilda, a couple others whose names I forget, and a couple more who never got names.

Of them all, Tito was the only one who truly sang. It was the same song every time, of course, but he sang with confidence and there were a few verses to it, so we didn't mind. The other males mostly just squawked, if that. I was always struck by how timid they were, and how the females always seemed to be browbeaten and submissive. It makes me wonder what the pet trade is doing to these birds, because most I've encountered didn't seem particularly healthy mentally. But when they were, as with Tito, they were pretty impressive.

[Reichu]

Tbh it was having a cockatiel that put me off keeping birds.

Hmm, yeah. Cockatiels. We used to have a bunch of those. My sister brought a couple home from her pet store job, and only the female was nice. Then they inevitably reproduced and brought three more cockatiels into the world, and since we were a bunch of irresponsible kids we didn't intervene at the right time, so the babies grew up into a bunch of antisocial jerkwads. (The son cockatiel was a chronic masturbator. Also died prematurely young. Wonder if the two were connected somehow.) For reasons I cannot remotely remember, the parents weren't separated, and they continued to bump vents, and two more waves of vile Nymphaea offspring were brought upon the world.

Somehow we got people to take the excess chicks off our hands, and while I was away at college my dad found someone to take the original family as well. (Like my sister cared about them anymore.) What a fucking relief. I hardly advocate the kind of awful negligence we Clark kids engaged in back then, and my guilt over the cockatiels continues to regularly haunt me in my dreams... but, yes, I must admit, I was quite happy to be rid of them. If this were Australia, we'd possibly be shooting them down as pests instead of keeping them as pets.

We still have my sister's other acquisition from that pet store, a very rowdy mitred conure named Donald. Since my sister has gone on to reproduce, she naturally has not had any time for silly parrots for years, so Donald's basically mine now, though the folks help out too. (He's living in their room until I move out. Which is hopefully soon-ish.) If you dislike cockatiels, you might just hate conures, though I've found that Donald is a bit more my style. I need to dig some videos off my phone, because words cannot do him justice.

I'll probably post some pics of the other non-humans in the house, whenever I do that.

[IronEvangelion]

I once had a pet armadillo. That thing was pretty cool, even if it was nearly impossible to handle. If I held a mealworm up to the mesh on the side of its pen, the armadillo would eat it out of my hand. Sadly I don't have any pictures of it. Oh, and don't let appearances fool you: armadillos are FAST!

[Sailor Star Dust]

Whoa, sounds awesome.

I think I've only seen them on the side of the road in Texas.

By the way, I'm also on the hype train to Midgar. This train we on make no stops!

[IronEvangelion]

I think I've only seen them on the side of the road in Texas.

They do have an unfortunate tendency to end up in a pancake form on the edges of roadways. They may be fast, but they also have extremely poor eyesight. I'm worried that future paleontologists will mistake the roadkill form for the creature's natural state.

By the way, I'm also on the hype train to Midgar. This train we on make no stops!

Nothing can stop our Hype Train, we've got Cloud riding on the roof!

[Ieyasu]

Cockatiels are a handful, but they have distinct personalities which makes them interesting.

True. This one definitely had personality, was not at all submissive, although to describe it I'd need to use the worst derogatory expletive in the English language. I guess "obnoxious" will do instead. Somebody decided to call it Captain Flint; Captain Flint was truly an obnoxious little £&%+.

I do wonder if someone didn't deliberately "liberate" Captain Flint before I found her so some unsuspecting moron would take her in. . . but she was healthy at least, if a bit skinny.

The pet trade is generally awful all around. I know I eventually got fired for disagreeing with my boss on how many fish she should have been keeping in her display tanks, among other things. She was keeping too many and 25% of the stock always died within a month. I later worked in a different store that had a pet section and had more rules on how the animals had to be kept and who you could sell them to and my main job was to talk to customers about what kind of animal they wanted and figure out if they knew anything at all about how to keep them and whether their environment was suitable. We had to refuse to sell to quite a few people. I suppose in places like that it was sightly better but the small time stores seem to do whatever they want.

That's how I ended up with chinchillas, at the larger store I was taking care of a pregnant chinchilla out back and I got attached and ended up taking them home myself. But in the end I realized how I disliked keeping animals in cages and tanks all the time. If I do get another pet at some point, it'll be one that doesn't need an enclosure.

The son cockatiel was a chronic masturbator

Yea, what is it with these birds. The same for the one we had, it seemed to want to knock up anything until it bonded with one particular human in the house, then it would only sexually harrass my dad. Of all the birds I've seen in pet stores, cockatiels are the most oversexed.

Edit: On the subject of me not being big on birds, maybe it's just fate I'm going to be tormented by them for life. Where I live there are masses of crows and jackdaws living in a colony in some trees about a hundred feet away. Every few days or so one of them tries to get at whatever is on the inside window ledge of the bedroom window. I removed everything shiny from it but they still have an unhealthy interest in whatever is near it on the inside. Plus the guy next door bought 30 guinea fowl a couple of years back and do they make noise. I think he ate all but one of them in the end, there's still one wandering around the field out back, it likes to make the stupidest noise ever first thing the morning for about 10 minutes.

Satan's minions.

[El Squibbonator]

One of the more unusual "pets" I ever had was a pair of young flying squirrels my father discovered in a birdhouse. We kept them in a cage at home for several weeks before letting them go.

[pwhodges]

Unusual pets dept: My father kept a jar of medicinal leeches on his mantelpiece for some years. The stick insects that followed them were more conventional, but had the annoying tendency to escape.

[Chainsaw Owl]

edit: Mr. Kitty passed away.

[honsou]

When I move up to NJ and get my own place I really hope to get a cat. Right now the only pet I have in my house is my aunt's tiny insanely old dog. Hes very quiet but tiny dogs just aren't my thing.

[Sailor Star Dust]

KITTEH.

[Ari]

I have two hypoallergenic Siberian cats, and one dog (shih-tzu Maltese).

i love my cats and they are so fluffy and adorable. they're both really affectionate; one is super skittish but also loves people and is very sweet, the other is not shy at all and loves attention



I got them when I was nine years old. Before them, I used to have two others, a black cat and a grey tabby, but I was six when they died and couldn't remember them well..

I really dislike my dog though. She isn't exactly nice to other animals and get angry a lot, but either way, I'm a cat person. I like that cats are a lot gentler and I just love their personalities. I wasn't part of my family's decision to get a dog, haha

[El Squibbonator]

Aww yeah, fluffy kitties! My cat is the opposite of fluffy; he's 16 years old, and he's taken to pulling out his fur and leaving it all over the house.

[Blue Monday]

One week in and the little feller's starting to grow on me I think...

SPOILER: Show

He's incredibly chatty (loves the sound of his own voice), playful and mischievous, so we love him most when he's sleeping.

SPOILER: Show

[Ari]

Aww yeah, fluffy kitties! My cat is the opposite of fluffy; he's 16 years old, and he's taken to pulling out his fur and leaving it all over the house.

shedding cats are truly a pain. mine she'd everywhere (they're like dandelions) and now lint rolling is something I always do before I leave the house >.<

[Joy Evangelion]

That cat looks like a cool dude for sure.

One week in and the little feller's starting to grow on me I think...

SPOILER: Show

He's incredibly chatty (loves the sound of his own voice), playful and mischievous, so we love him most when he's sleeping.

SPOILER: Show

Congratulations on the kitty, man. He looks like a total trip with those eyes. I'd love to take care of one or two, but I live alone and try to spend as little time at my apartment as possible and I'd feel too guilty leaving the things alone for too long. But there are a pretty decent amount of alley cats that hang around so once in a while I can watch them do goofy cat things.

[Ieyasu]

My uncle has a kitler apparently. He just took a phone video of it entering the bathroom while he's taking a dump (thankfully all that was visible of him was limbs), climbing into his floored pants and getting comfortable in there.

What is it with cats and bathroom breaks. The lock on my bathroom door was useless at one point, the cat used to bust in, watch me for thirty seconds intently and then leave, leaving the door wide open so everyone passing by would view the glory.

It would be great to be as selectively deaf as a cat.