Wolfy Asked...
- how many of you, had no close pets as children, but later in life
became animal and ferret people?
- how many of you, had a couple of standard pets such as dogs or cats
as children?
- how many of you had close contact with more unusual species of
animals as children?

As a child, I was allowed a cat.  I will never forget my first, a stray
that we would sit on the front porch stairs with (we lived in a third
floor walk-up) and feed raw hot dogs to.  He was old, battered faced,
rounded ears from many battles.  He only had a very few teeth left, but
that didn't stop him from enjoying raw hot dogs.  He would rub against
my legs.

One day as I was walking home from kindergarden, I found him stretched
out across the top of a wooden peach basket that was awaiting trash pick
up service in front of our apartment building.  He was so very still.
And I knew he wasn't my cat anymore.

Other cats followed as the years passed, and then a dog came to live
with us in my teens.  A loyal, loyal one of the American Eskimo series,
a white Spitz we named Moby Dog.

As I got older and had more say, I rescued a pair of male rats that were
about to be fed to snakes.  I loved my rats.  They knew their nanes, and
came when called.  I shared chocolate covered almonds with them.  I gave
them bags of dried beans for soup, and steak bones.  (Oh, they loved
steak bones.)

They grew old and died, and I discovered hedgehogs.  Then I moved out,
to the family farm, and started collecting all manner of creatures that
others didn't want.  The boy cow I bought for five dollars, Walter.  We'd
lie in the grass together.  I'd lie up against his warm side and use him
as a big bean bag chair.  He ate my flowers but it was impossible to get
mad at him.

Then there were the potbellied pigs that nobody wanted.  Especially the
blind one whose hooves had been neglected so badly that he could never
walk properly.

I had chickens.  I had ducks.  A Jacob's sheep that played with the dog
I rescued from the pound, Allis Chompers.  It was a loving, neurotic
petting zoo.  The house had no internal heating, except for woodstoves.
When my husband was away working late on winter nights, I'd sleep on a
mattress down on the floor in front of the woodstove, surrounded by a few
cats, a dog, some hedgehogs tunneled beneath the blankets.  There were
many strange snores in the night.

And then....some people no longer needed their ferrets.  They, too, made
their way into the blankets before the woodstove in the dead of winter.
A truce was declared, and no ferret ever chased any cat, and no dog
ever chased any hedgehog, and nobody fought anybody for a place under
the blankets.  It was just quiet and cold and still in the night.....
snoring.... honk-weet-sigh-purr, and the soft wuffeling of the dog in
her sleep.

Thank the lord, Walter the cow slept outside in the barn with the pigs
and the sheep.  There just wasn't enough room for *all* of us in front
of the woodstove.

Finally, we had to move, and find homes for everyone.  But the ferrets?
They came with *us*.  And they've never left, since.

Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 5270]