My Furry Family
I thought it was high time that I made the animals their own page, since I often post pictures of them and talk about them.
Fatty is nineteen years old, and she acts like it. One of my friends found her as a kitten in an alley when she was only a month old, I snuck her home under my shirt and we’ve been together ever since. She spent a solid 3-4 years of her life trying to kill me, when I first brought her home I couldn’t even sleep with her in the room because she would attack my face. She would lie in wait in the hall, and as I walked to the bathroom in the morning, she would run out and bite the backs of my legs. Eventually she calmed down to where she would only bite me if I tried to touch her for more than five seconds. In hindsight she sounds like a monster, but I never considered getting rid of her (or declawing her, that would’ve just resulted in more biting and a pissier cat). Now that she’s old she still swipes at me, but it’s half-assed. She’s still pretty spry, the only way her age shows is that she can’t really jump anymore, so all of our windowsills have holes in them from her sinking her claws in and hoisting herself up. She’s my little old bitchface and I love her.
Genghis and Gozer are twelve years old, they are brother and sister and came from my parents neighbors barn cat. I told Brian he was going to get to pick one, but in reality I had already picked these two out. He almost wanted a cat besides Genghis, but that cat wasn’t interested in him, and now Genghis is totally the love of his life. They used to be friendly and play, but as Genghis gets older she gets more crotchety and now hates everyone who doesn’t have hands to pet her with. They also look so different, a lot of people don’t believe they’re related!
Gozer is long, skinny, and was possibly sent to earth by aliens to observe humans. He is just weird. He eats everything, is very good at stealing food right out from under your hands, and then he will probably puke it up. He’s obsessed with straws, so no fast food sodas will be left unturned in this house. He threw up on my old laptop and it leaked into the screen, so I had to internet through a veil of cat puke for a year. He is the most lovey cat, always looking for a way to sneak into your lap as soon as you sit down. He is also the most tolerant of the dogs. He’s the only cat who catches mice (but they’re indoors so this isn’t something he does often), and somehow we trained him to sit in a chair at the table during dinner if he wants food (and then he is rewarded with small scraps of cat-friendly food).
Genghis is fat (but has lost weight since we moved), scared of dogs, mortal enemies with Fatty, and does not like to be held. You will pet her where she wants, when she wants, and when she’s done, she will bite you and tell you to fuck off. She is a total diva who spends most of her time hiding under the covers of our bed or sitting in her bed on Brian’s desk.
Fawkes is about six, adopted from animal control in November of 2011. When we met him (on Guy Fawkes day), he was smelly, dirty, skinny, and emotionally numb (probably from his owner leaving him tied up in an alley all the damn time). I literally took home the most pathetic dog I could find. When we picked him up he would just go rigid and be totally non-responsive, and he acted like he had never seen a toy in his life. It took some time and he still acts a little funny (he paces in counter-clockwise circles when he’s upset or excited), but now he chews on toys (and other things) all the time, licks faces like it’s going out of style, terrorizes my neighbors, and is a pretty sweet dog. He is very smart and we use a combination of crate training and clicker/treat training to keep him from peeing in the house.
Harley is our old-but-new dog, she belonged to my father-in-law’s daughter, then they had to move so they asked him to take her, and she lived there for almost two years as his dog. Then they asked for her back, and then they REALLY couldn’t keep her and when we heard she’d be given up, Brian and I immediately asked for her back. She is an Australian sumthinsumthin, totally gorgeous (which leads to loads of compliments while Fawkes stands there and I am thankful he can’t understand that he’s being ignored), super sweet, independent, and has an ass that i’m pretty sure Sir Mix-A-Lot wrote a song about. Harley is around five or six.
Bonny was killed by another dog in December 2010, which you can read about here. However, I still consider her a part of the family and she is all over the site, so there is no way I would not include her story here.
In the spring of 2007, my friend Andria emailed me to tell me that her mom’s dogs had just had puppies, and that one of them was born with an eye that didn’t produce tears that needed to be medicated three times a day. Shockingly, the woman who was going to pay hundreds of dollars for her was no longer interested! Since Andria knew that I wasn’t working, she wanted to know if I would take the dog since I had the time to care for her. She showed me a picture, and it was all over. Brian was kind of skeptical, but he was actually the one who held her first and it was clear that he was just as in love as I was. She chewed up a lot of shoes and books, and crapped all over the place, but she grew into an awesome runt of a dog, never getting past five pounds. She was the most friendly dog, with people and with other dogs. She always wanted to be friends and play, and lick you all over. At some point, she figured out that me saying ‘bad kitty’ meant the cats were doing something wrong (like clawing the couch), so she started running up to them and barking whenever I said it. After a year, we had her eye removed and she lived the rest of her life as a happy, one-eyed dog.
Chester left us after eight years in June 2013. He was my perfect dog, my bro, and I wrote his entire life story here.
Lily, Coco and Rico are my dog-in-laws, aka my father-in-laws dogs, so they also appear from time to time. Coco is a dog that was kept in a crate and used as a puppy factory until her former owners decided she was spent. She is very shy and really scared of women – it took her over a year to fully warm up to me. She hates wood floors so there is a series of rugs throughout the house and watching her psych herself up to run from one to the other is pretty funny. We don’t know much about Lily’s history, but we are pretty sure she was also used for breeding and kept outside most of the time. She didn’t even know how to sit when we got her and she acts like a puppy, despite being six years old (supposedly). Rico is a newer family member, he’s a one-year-old Chihuahua with giant ears and giant energy, but he also lets me hold him like a baby and rub his chest.
I don’t think i’ve ever really posted about them, but Izzy and Bella are my sister-in-law’s Chinese crested mutts. Bella is the looker but Izzy is my favorite. I like to dog sit for them because if I lay down in a recliner and watch a movie, they will curl up between my legs and sleep forever.
