Honored and permission granted msblue, sorry it took me a bit, the net has been acting up this past week.

I swear if I ever have a cat that acts like a CAT, that will be their name.

So after remembering Hopper, it of course brought to mind our little Hooligan.

The story of how we came to own him is bad enough...

I was sitting at home playing with my three cats at the time, we already had to work on the apartment manager just to have the third cat at the time since the pet limit was 2. So when a knock came at the door, naturally I expected it to be one of my neighbors who was always coming over to hang out. Instead I was greeted by the sight of a little boy holding a bag, and his mother holding a ball of fluff at arms length pinched between two fingers.

Holy cat!!! I reached out and grabbed the poor tiny kitten as the mother said a bit hysterically, "It scares my children, the landlady said you might take it!" Before I can even get out a response as I was still trying to rescue the kitten from her weak hold, the son all but tosses the bag at me and starts to run away. The mother says a quick thank you right after my hand gets around the kitten and they're gone...

Leaving me trying to figure out how I'm going to explain our family's apparent newest addition when my husband gets home. Especially since I'm not sure I understand how I got him either? And I don't understand how, exactly a ball of fluff no bigger than the palm of my hand can 'scare' children so much.

Well, I decide since there's nothing else to do for now, I might as well let him meet his potential older brothers. So I set him on the floor, and wait for the boys to come over to investigate. Their all good boys, I don't really fear for the kitten's safety though I'm right there to keep an eye on things.

Clyde who was the easiest going of the boys, comes over first. Gets swatted on his nose in rapid fire ninja kitten moves and is gone. 'What the... Clyde your head is bigger than the kitten!' Nope he's hiding under the bed, won't budge.

So Koosh-ball, Clyde's twin, and the braver of the two, decides he's going avenge his brother and check out this kitten. I hear a sound, reminiscent of a Tasmanian devil and before I save Koosh from the attack, the little ball of fluff becomes a whirling dervish. Koosh is now beside Clyde under the bed.

Now I'm a little bit worried about this slightly scary kitten, more for it's safety at this point since Squeaky Toy decides he needs to get up from his roost on the shelf and tell this kitten what's what. Squeaky is a good boy, but he can be quite violent to anyone or anything that messes with the twins.

So Squeaky approaches, I'm ready to grab the kitten if need be, his tail is poofed up, his hair is standing straight up on the back of his neck, but does the little hooligan care? Nope! Quicker than I can grab him, he's on Squeaky, and my last hope for saving me from the little hellcat is now hiding behind the twins under the bed....

At least now I understand, how a little tiny poof of fur no bigger than the palm of ones hand can scare children to such a degree. I'm a fully grown adult and I'm rather waiting for the horns to grow from his head, along with a second tail.

After fighting off three fully grown and matured male cats, the little guy trots over to my foot, snuggles up and starts purring. And that is how the DH found me when he got home from work. Stuck in the same spot, needing to use the restroom for at least the past two hours, and dying of thirst, but too scared to move since my lord and master was napping on my foot.

The DH asked me "What the heck is that?" As soon as he spied the seemingly innocent fluff ball, and like a good wife I replied, "I have no idea..." and jumped up, ran to the bathroom, locked myself in and gave him the pleasure of figuring it out for himself.

Needless to say we had Hooligan for 6 years until he tragically died from liver cancer in '05

Well, you did it again!

You made me laugh out loud at the story of how Hooligan came to join your happy little cat family.

It just goes to show there's a home for every fur baby . They just have to fnd each other.

I love your stories. They truly make my day!
Thank you.

I don't know if ya'll remember me talking about my newest "little brother" a pound puppy that my folks adopted not too long ago. But my mother shared his latest trick with me and I knew it was perfect to share as yet another pet story.

So my father was playing and rough-housing around with Major, having a grand old time of it. Got him playing tug of war, chasing after his multiple balls, diving into his lap for puppy hugs. Just playing to their little hearts content, when nature called for my father. He took a short break and headed into the bathroom. Major decided turn around was fair play, so rather than going over to the door to go out, he found what I guess he thought was a puppy urinal, and peed down the A/C floor vent with amazing accuracy.

It took my mother a moment to even realize what little Major was up to, since she could hear kind of dripping behind her, but couldn't for the life of her understand why the sound seemed to be coming from the middle of the room, until she turned around to find the dog ever so proud of himself for finding the solution to needing to ask to go out.

Of course my mother did quite quickly assure my little brother that he had not in fact found a solution to nature's call while indoors and sent him OUTSIDE to finish his business. And my DH has the distinct pleasure of helping my mother clean the A/C duct work since he handles all the their A/C needs.

The good news out of all of this is "little brother" was neither grounded to dog pen, nor sent to bed without supper for his crimes, instead both of my parents think it is hilarious, NEVER want it to happen again, but kind of that once in lifetime event that you would never even have thought as a possibility.

Finally a success of sorts for Snowcap! We have built in cup holders on our couch, and for whatever reason they fascinate him. Normally when I'm cleaning up around the house, he'll decide to clean out the cups (does a fair job of it too, buffing out the water rings and dusting out his fur). But today he was just having a blast pawing away at them, so I started teasing him by dropping little things into the cups.

Finally I realized, they'd be a perfect pet puzzle for treats for him (taking his learning curve into account) so I grabbed a handful of treats and dropped some into both cups, and then just to keep him occupied a bit longer I tossed a tissue over the treats and stuffed it down pretty well into the cups.

It still took him a bit to figure out where the treats were, he knew I grabbed them, knew I went into the living room with them, but couldn't figure out where the treats could be, he even tried running through his list of tricks, he sat, spoke, pawed, danced, laid down, rolled over, froze, and then looked up at me like "okay ma what gives..."

So I fiddled with the tissue a bit to entice him towards the cup holders... Still took him a minute to figure out that the treats were under the tissues, he could smell them, so he jumped off the couch a few times two try and check underneath it.

But finally in a stroke of 'genius' given his intelligence level he figured it out. He pawed out the tissue and then spent the next thirty minutes fighting to dig out the treats (all 7 of them). And he still had one more cup holder to go, I wish I could say he did better.... But if wishes were horses.... I mean he fell off the couch three times and failed to attempts to jump back up.

Not going to hold my breath for him faring better tomorrow, but soooooo gonna do it again tomorrow, I think it'll take awhile to lose its entertainment value.

I had an iguana named Neelie. she was a big girl, 7 feet long. She had free roam of the house and she slept with me, on HER side of the bed on a heating pad covered with a folded baby blanket. She was a sweetheart. She'd follow me around or else she would sit in the sun in a south facing window all day.

As far as her pooping, she only went once a day and that was IN water in the bathtub, which I scrubbed out everyday.

Anyway, one day I filled the tub with warm water and put her in. After a few minutes I heard a spash, I ran in to the bathroom and she had hit her head right into the side of the tub and cracked her skull.

Blood was pouring out her nose and mouth and I was sure she would die soon.
There wasn't much anyone could do for her except make her comfortable and wait.

We layed on my bed. Every once in a while she'd hike up on her front legs and move closer to me. I'd pet her and talk to her. It took another 10 hours for the end to come. She slowly lapsed into what seemed like a coma as her brain swelled. She died in my arms. I cried uncontrollably. Even now, while writing this my eyes are filled with tears.

I put her in the lake. Back to nature.

Awww, I'm so sorry for you and your iguana. I love animals of all sorts (snakes and worms are truly the only exception, well people sometimes too). But she sounds like she was truly such a dear.

I had a Rottweiler mix I got from the vets office I was working for. A malnourished tiny little thing. We called him Doc, Doc Skurloc. He was only three weeks old when I got him, still needed to be bottle fed and helped along a bit with doing his business. He went everywhere with me, though the vets figured he might survive a few days at best, he was recovering quite well.

I worked for a horse barn at the same time and Doc always came to work with me. The horses were used to dogs, and Doc never knew anything but being around the horses. He enjoyed playing with the other dogs at the barn too, so I never doubted my decision to bring him with me.

One day, one of the boarder's kid's was playing with Doc, so I figured I could run up to the main house to refill drinks for down at the barn. I had only just stepped inside the house when the boarder came screaming up behind "Doc's dead...Doc's dead..." Was all she could get out. I rushed back out into the yard, he'd been kicked in the head by one of the horses.

I thought for sure he was killed instantly, and I simply ran (only 14 at the time) it was three miles to my house, and though the boarder had jumped immediately into her truck to chase me, she didn't catch up till I made it home. By then one of the other boarders who I worked with at the vets office called and told me he wasn't dead.

She was on her way with him, we were going to the vets office immediately. It was unfortunately only a short bit of hope. His palate had been broken, along with his left eye socket and his nose, and an unknown amount of damage to his neck. I had no choice but to put him down. It was difficult, something I never wish to live through again, especially since when I joined him in the exam room after I got there, the little guy gave a whimper and tried to drag himself across the table towards me. I pushed my coworker out of the way to grab him. And hugged him while they administered the shots.

His brain was too damaged for the anesthesia to have any effect, so without any other choice they administered the euthanasia while he tried to lick at my fingers. My heart broke that day to where I never thought it would mend again, and even when I think of it now, I don't believe it was merely the drama of youth that crushed it so. But it did mend, and stronger still, and I still brought my next vet rescue puppy down to the barn. Still rode and showered the horse who kicked him with treats and pats. And still let the boarder's son play with and watch my new fur baby when I needed to run up to the house for something.

Perhaps it's because he'll never be forgotten, that I'm such a collector of fur babies, sometimes keeping them for the rest of their lives, sometimes fixing them up for new homes. After all, how can you not believe in the love of an animal when they're mortally injured and still just want to be held and give out kisses to their owner? How could I turn my back on others in need when to the last, Doc seems to have thought I was a pretty good friend to be with?

Ugh, sorry, for the depressing post... I'm going to end it here and probably go have a good cry, I do actually have a few funny anecdotes to share of little Doc's adventures in his short life.

I understand. Again.

Okay as promised a funny story about Doc.

When I said he went everywhere with me, it was pretty much EVERYWHERE. The teen 'mom' me at the time didn't get a break, not even the bathroom was sacred. I even tried asking my mom, to give me a break and puppy-sit for me during my cousin's graduation party. She showed up an hour later, Doc in tow, who you could hear crying as she was coming down the street with him to my uncle's house, and then he tried stopping halfway through a howl of tears the second he saw me.

But anyways, at about 8 weeks we decided it was probably time to start housebreaking little Doc, not any real training given his age, accidents will happen even with 5 year olds, but given his breed we decided that going on newspaper in the bathroom while 'mommy' was in there going, wasn't going to be a long term solution.

The problem was, he never seemed to think that outside was a place to go. He went for walks constantly, was always out in the great outdoors, but I guess had it in his head he was not a dog, and the only time and place he could go was when I had to.

In all fairness he had lost his mother before she could teach him proper bathroom techniques, as a male he even squatted down rather like a female dog, which is sad to say he properly learned from my posture in that regard. So my parents told me that if I wanted to start teaching him, and since he wasn't figuring it out no matter how long or far of a walk I took him on, that well maybe I just need to drop my drawers and show him.

We lived on a fairly secluded and well wooded lot... And while I love camping, if I have a choice of outdoors or in... I'm going with in...

So my dad finally offered to be the 'teacher'. Doc loved going on walks around the yard with dad, and was about the only 15 minute breaks I got from the pup on daily basis. Now when my father offered, I was thankful but at the same time thinking to myself 'TMI!!!!' but well something had to be done. And since my father was willing to gross me out and save my dignity from hanging out in the woods, well what's a kid to choose...

So he goes out for the first day of 'training', and I get an unnecessary report of failure which included the number of trees my father tried to show him at....Second day, similar report other than my dad's apologies that he couldn't try at another tree.... Third day, my dad comes in with a dripping wet puppy

Was it raining?

My dad hands me the wet the dog, and says nope it wasn't raining, but Doc seemed to have thought the point of the exercise was an outdoor shower.... Into the tub we went, almost re-enacting the Crying Game for both me and dog as I scrubbed like I've never scrubbed before.

A week later Doc had learned that he could go potty outside, due to the loss and airing out of my dignity.

Oh gosh, where to start? I've had some pets that were/are real characters! Our current senior kitty is Katie, she is about 14 and we've had her since she was 6 months old. She lived on a farm with her mother and siblings before that, which I think really teaches them a lot.

We had three cats and no kids for quite a while, and we weren't sure how the kitties would react when our son was born. The two older cats at the time were not impressed, but Katie seemed to think she was his guardian or something. She watched over him all the time and got very agitated when he cried.

One day I was trying to change his diaper and he had a bad rash, so he was screaming bloody murder. There wasn't much I could do about it, the diaper had to be changed, his bottom had to be cleaned, then I could put some cream on it. Katie heard him letting out that piercing wail that means "Ouch!" from any creature and came to the conclusion that I was hurting him. She ran into his room, growled at me, and bit me on the ankle! She had to jump up and make sure he was ok before she backed down.

Another time, when he was about six months old, I went to check on him in his crib. I found Katie snuggled up with him trying to wash his hair and getting her tongue hopelessly tangled in his curls, while he gnawed contentedly on her hind leg. They both seemed to be happy with the situation so I left them to it!