Mid 2023, my husband and I rehomed a big, fuzzy, one year old ginger himbo from a friend in Cape Breton. (Said friend checks in a lot, circumstances just got in the way of cat ownership.) Milo's the talkiest, and sookiest, poor little meow meow-iest
He likes sleeping on our legs, has a weird thing for swiping at toes if they move under the covers, and has decided it is always dinner time. His favourite toy is a little duck that you can put catnip in, that gets tossed around the bedroom, affectionately called 'Drug Duck'; when he isn't trying to pull my cables out so he can eat them instead. He likes belly rubs, and chirping at the squirrels.
My first pets were fish that I caught in the brook. My second pet was a guinea pig named Saluki (after the winning breed at that year's Crufts' dog show). She was a very neurotic thing, but cute and affectionate. She used to run around the living room floor in a pen made of upturned vhs boxees, until my dad built her a proper run outdoors, that she would squeak around in to her heart's content.
Saluki lived a very long life for a guinea pig - my dad used to breed them, so know a lot of tricks for good health. We even joke she got 'ressurected' once when we thought she was on the brink, and instead she decided she wanted orange juice and ice cream.
Our first proper family pet, though, was a cairn terrier - full pedigree name Tara, Princess of the Glen. Tara was the runt of the litter, and I still remember the day we got her, because my mother had always told us we couldn't have a dog because they can't "take their boots off at the door".
We went to visit the puppies, and Tara was the only one left - a tiny little thing that fit in the palm of one hand, and nuzzled right up to the pocket of my hoodie and decided it was hers. She helped my brother get over his fear of dogs, and was never much of a barker. She once auditioned for the part of Toto in a stage production of 'The Wizard of Oz', and funnily enough, lost to her own aunt.
When we moved to the Philippines in my late teens, Tara came with us. She had my green hoodie that she'd always liked in her freight carrier, and I never got it back! It was hers from then on. When I went to uni back in Scotland, I used to call her and have 'conversations' on the phone. She was very loved in Ayala Alabang, and fussed over by a lot of the neighbours. When my parents got another dog, a shih tzu puppy named Shadow, in Tara's final years, he loved her and followed her around like a big sister.
