I mentioned in yesterday's pootie diary that we used to have chinchillas as pets, and I was asked to elaborate, so I am writing about all of my childhood pets. Some were pooties and woozles, and we also had other animals that you could say were less commonly kept as pets.
As you read this, keep in mind that my Dad always said he hated pets, especially cats. And we believed him for some reason.
None of the pictures in this diary are of my actual pets. Sadly I don't have any pics of them. But these are VERY close approximations! Thanks to Google Images for helping me find them, and great thanks to whomever they belong to.
Follow me over the squiggle!
San Fernando, CA. The first pets I remember were cats. Trump and Spot. Spot was killed somehow. I don't remember what happened to Trump. I was only 0-4 years old at this house. We also had a dog, Kelly. He was a German Shepherd/Collie mix, named for the Disney episodes "Atta Girl Kelly." He would eat almost anything. This is what Trump looked like:
And this is an amazing likeness of Kelly:
Van Nuys, CA. Here we had Kelly and Dad brought home our first exotic pets. Baby alligators. I have only a faint memory of them. They lived in a baby's bathtub, and we had to get rid of them when they outgrew it. I don't know what Dad was thinking. He had to know they were going to get too big to keep. Kelly got hit by a car but survived.
Van Nuys, CA House #2. Here we still had Kelly, and I got a kitty. Her name was Frisky, a gray shorthair. Yes, I named her for Little Friskies. I was 5 years old and imaginative naming wasn't my strong suit. Frisky had kittens - IN THE POUND - because Mrs. Wagner next door was a witch and took her one day while we were all away. The kittens all died. Mrs. Wagner hated us because we had a pony, Gidget the Midget, the ugliest pony you EVER saw. She regularly complained about Kelly getting into her backyard, but the only way he could have done that was if she magicked him into it. Frisky later had more kittens, two that we know of, but she had them in the crawl space under the house across the street. We didn't know where they were until they were a couple of months old and totally wild. We tried but we could never tame them. Kelly disappeared sometime later - we think he was stolen.
This looks a lot like Gidget, except that Gidget was smaller, and had the ugliest face you ever saw on a pony. Her face was so dished it looked like a letter L.
My Mom says that we got even with Mrs. Wagner. She tells the story that Mrs. Wagner often illegally brought seeds and cuttings into the country from abroad, so we informed on her to Customs.
Northridge, CA. Frisky wouldn't stay at the new house. We assume she went back to the old one. We didn't have a cat again for some time. But we got a Samoyed named Tegar. He had been a friend's. We had him until he bit my brother. We had an Irish Setter for a little while, but he was too high energy for us. We finally found a dog who was just right. Pica looked exactly like the dog on the Traveler's Insurance ads that you can see on TV lately. He used to follow me to school every day. We also had a lot of other animals: horses, the ugly pony, a chicken that we suppose once had been domesticated but wasn't anymore, rabbits, quail, the chinchillas, and African Pygmy goats. Dad also got interested in tropical fish during this time. I particularly remember the candy stripe plecostomus and the lyre-tail mollies. The goats were Buckwheat and Suzy. Suzy was pregnant when we got them, and she had two kids. She was killed by a dog or something, so we had to raise the kids on bottles. They used to follow us around like puppies and they didn't appreciate the difference between INside and OUTside.
Playa del Rey, CA. We went from a big house on 2.5 acres to a 3-bedroom apartment. Quite a change. We got rid of all the animals except the tropical fish, but we later bought a new cat. She was an adorable thing and we named her Won Ton. And the horrible thing was she died the day we got her. You know how cats sometimes freak out and start jumping around? We had her outside the apartment, in the hallway, and she went nuts and crashed herself into the metal fire door. It broke her neck and she had to be put down. A few days later we got Herbert and later on [Kitty] Carlyle. I wish I had pictures of them. Herbert wasn't pretty but he was really sweet. Carlyle liked to climb up the grasscloth wallpaper. He totally shredded it. We also had a new exotic pet: a tarantula. Transient wasn't my idea of a great pet, but my little sister liked him. She particularly liked to sneak up behind people and crawl her hand up their back to make them think the tarantula was there. Also, Dad switched to saltwater tropical fish. He tried different ones but eventually all we had were two lionfish. They are poisonous so they can't live with other fish.
I can't really remember what kind of tarantula we had... so I'm only guessing:
My Mom had always put up with Dad bringing home strange pets, but she always said if he brought home a snake she was leaving. One day, I got home from school and found Dad panicked. He had brought home a baby Blue Racer and it had gotten out. He made us promise not to tell Mom, but my sister was only about 9 years old and couldn't keep secrets. Mom got home from work and sat down in the comfy chair. Laura couldn't help herself. "I have a secret but Dad said I can't tell you." "OH? What are you not supposed to tell me?" "I can't tell." "Tell or you are not going trick-or-treating." (This was shortly before Halloween.) "I'm not supposed to tell you about the snake." This is the point at which Mom got up, packed an overnight bag for herself, me, and Laura, and called a friend to see if we could stay the night. We left and hoped that Dad would find the snake by the next day! He claims he did, but I never saw it, so how do I know?
Chatsworth, CA. A brand new house, never before lived in. We gave Carlyle away, and kept Herbert. But my parents made him be an outdoor cat and he didn't last very long. I turned 18 and moved out, but the family switched to Himalayans, Shalimar and Parfait. They kept them indoors and bred them. At one point both had litters a week apart so there were about 9 very fluffy cats in the house. They kept one from each litter.
This looks just like Shalimar:
Dad's original excuse for buying the Himalayans (and the chinchillas, and the baby quail) was that they were "breeding stock" not pets. But that explanation didn't hold water when he refused to sell two of the kittens.