Potential Pets?

Hosted by Cecily and Emily

Photos copyright: Maggie May

Here I was with three African Land Snails in my care until the end of half term. I took them home from school because my two granddaughters have been hankering after pets for a long time.

I think they were thinking more in terms of warm and fluffy though, rather than hard and slimy.

Day one, the girls seemed quite interested for a while but they kept asking when the snails were going to move as they did seem to have very long periods in the plant pots napping.

Although I am rather cruel to the snails in my garden because I chuck them over into the back lane,( giving them the chance to get out of the way of vehicles that go there), these pet snails brought out the protective in me and I lived in dread of something happening to them while they were in my care.

They loved lettuce and pears and cucumber and they had to be sprayed with tepid water everyday.

Eventually I had to pick them up and clean them out before returning them to school. Not as bad as I thought, though I did put on rubber gloves to do it.

I suppose even these creatures are a tie when holidays come, which is the main reason why we can't go fluffy because those kinds of animals seem to be even more dependant pets than snails!

Back to the drawing board!

Any one know of anything that is no trouble, but more interesting than a snail and that is definitely not a rodent?

Photostory Friday is hosted by Cecily. Do look her up!

The Tale Of The Two Bad Girls!

Memory Lane

There were once two rather naughty girls. 

When my friend Bella and I were around eleven years old, we were into secrets in a big way. We both decided that we wanted a secret pet even though we both already had a cat each and my family already had a spaniel dog. However, we wanted to keep a pet that no one else knew about. We decided on a couple of mice!

We planned our venture down to the last detail. I had a cardboard box and I made some air holes in it. I smuggled a piece of my brother's railway line out of his room and tied it into the box to make a little staircase for the mice to exercise on. We then put in a small dish of water and some seed for them to eat.

We collected our pocket money and went quite a long way to a pet shop taking a jam jar with us. It must have been a Saturday.

The man in the pet shop told us that there were two mice left. There was a white one, which I really wanted, and a brown one. Bella bagged the white one and I disappointedly accepted the brown one.

The pet shop man told us they were a shilling each! (five pence in todays money). He didn't ask us if we knew anything about keeping mice or if our parents had agreed. Nor did he say what sex the mice were.

He put the mice in the jam jar and off we set to Bella's home where the box was already in place in the spare bedroom.

We popped the new pets into their cardboard box and I left for home as Bella had to go down for tea.

The following Monday, my friend informed me that her mother was furious with me and was going to ring my mother that morning. Her cat had suddenly decided to frantically want to go into the spare bedroom and Bella's mother couldn't understand why and went to investigate.

The cat unfortunately killed my brown mouse and the white one had got into a chest of drawers and had peed on the clean bed linen and had started to chew things up. My friend's mother was really annoyed because they were expecting guests from America and they had got the room clean and now everything had to be washed from out of the chest of drawers.

I knew my mother would go over the top with punishing me. She always did, so I went home in great fear. I had thought of running away.

When I got home I was pounced on and my mother didn't let up from ranting and raving for hours.

All Bella got was a short lecture and she had to pay for a wooden mouse house with a glass front, from pocket money for the white mouse, which cost 12/6d. (About 61p) which was a lot of money to find in those days, for a child.

I felt sorry for myself for days afterwards because I hadn't wanted the brown mouse in the first place and now the cat had eaten it and it had cost me a shilling.  On top of this, Bella's mother told my Mum that I was a bad influence and I got into far more trouble than she did.

Bella eventually married an American man and has been living in USA for years. We still keep in touch though and occasionally laugh about the antics that we got up to as children.

 

Foggi, Sticky & Furry Fred!

"Just for one night," I firmly told my teenaged children when one of them brought a wet & bedraggled, frightened, black kitten into the house, rescued from slashing rain outside. "Tomorrow it will have to go!"

Well I couldn't send it back outside in that storm, could I? But I definitely didn't want a cat. It had been a wonder that the frantic meowing had been heard above the storm, in the first place, when it cried outside the back door.

As we had no suitable cat food, we fed it small pieces of Cheddar cheese, that disappeared quickly down its ravenous throat.

In the end, Sam braved the storm and went to the nearest shop to buy a small tin of cat food, as it wasn't staying, I stressed. The hungry kitten devoured it quickly and it was obvious that it hadn't been fed for a long time.

Well this was the beginning of our love affair with cats. Debbie named him Furry, as his black coat had dried out to reveal his lovely sleek fur. However, Sam thought that was a soppy name and called him Fred. He soon learned to respond to either or both, so he was named Furry Fred!

Furry Fred was a bit of a wanderer and kept escaping from the back garden and liked to sit in the main road and was always weaving in & out of traffic. I tried to keep him indoors, but he was never happy and usually managed to escape.

He was forever being bitten by the local felines and must have been defending himself, as he certainly wasn't a bully by nature. This resulted in him having to have abscesses lanced at the vets. We had already had him neutered 

Four years later, my friend asked me if I'd go with her to help her choose a kitten! Well that was a silly thing for me to do and I came home with Foggi, a delightful  grey female kitten and she looked as if she was an expensive pedigree.

Furry Fred was not at all impressed with his new companion and hissed and stomped off, spending more time at Doreen's house over the road. Doreen was rather a lonely lady  who enticed him over with expensive tins of salmon, not realizing how dangerous it was becoming for him to dodge the traffic.

The lady who gave us Foggi, had one kitten left and as he was the runt of the litter was very small and not attractive in any way, having black, sticky fur that stuck out in all directions, he was going to be put to sleep if no one chose him by the end of the week, she had said.

Well, I couldn't let that happen to Foggi's brother, could I? So within a few days I went back to see if he was still there and he was. Nobody wanted this poor little mite.

Foggi was delighted to be reunited with her brother & she and Sticky were always close by one another and slept head to tail, snuggled up.

Because of his love of danger, and his salmon addiction, Furry Fred had several accidents in the road that resulted in him breaking a leg on two occasions and his jaw on another and together with his frequent trips to the vet for abscess lancing, Furry Fred was an expensive cat to keep!

In spite of his unfortunate start in life, he went on to live for 21 years, living a happy life, I think.

Sticky grew into a fine, handsome cat and lived a happy and uneventful life in the house and back garden to the age of 16.

Foggi was my absolute favourite and she & I were very close. She was pretty and affectionate and always sat on my knee while I twiddled with her ears and watched TV. She died at 14 years of age and I was truly heartbroken.

I have fought off the temptation to even look at another kitten, even though I've had many opportunities and offers! However I often think back to how our "cat era" began when I agreed to take in Furry Fred for just one night!