Jemima the Chicken (an antidote to cat stories)
On moving into a house, I once took on the right to 'look after' someone elses chicken. This was back when I was first living on the national trust estate.
The lodge house that I was renting backed onto a courtyard that was for my private use. Leading off from this courtyard was a barn and an old building that had been a bakery 300 years before.
Now this was where Jemima the chicken had taken up residence.
The chicken had belonged to a batty old aunt of the landlords wife. When she'd died the only thing she'd left them was this chicken.
I was given a bag of chicken feed and was asked 'if I didn't mind awfully, just now and then, to give her a bit of feed and look after her?'
I didn't really mind, it was an unusual request but the rent was cheap and I got to enjoy the grounds whenever I wanted to. Also, the landlord and landlady liked to smoke weed, something dear to my own heart.
Anyway, when I moved in I also moved in a modest trio of young healthy ganja plants and installed them in the courtyard where I thought they would get plenty of sun. I'd been growing them for about six weeks and was keeping an eye out for some good bud growth.
At this point, you'd think it would have been prudent of someone to point out to me that chickens eat EVERY FUCKING BIT OF PLANT LIFE IN THE FUCKING GARDEN before I'd put them out there.
Within two hours of moving in, my plants where frayed green stumps.
I looked around the garden, all the flowerbeds in the courtyard had nothing but dirt in them. This chicken had eaten everything in the garden and anything I put out there would suffer the same fate.
I knew the fucker had to go and I wish this tale was one of revenge and that I had been the instrument of her death (one involving lots of roast spuds). Sadly, this was not to be.
She lived quite happily alongside us for about six months and, during that time, put me off eating eggs for a couple of years.
Every now and then, she would lay one for us to collect. We'd eat it, marvelling at how great it was to have a chicken laying eggs for us (even if it was only the odd one).
Then one day, my cat was playing with a mouse in the courtyard. The cat and the chicken usually avoided eachother, but on this day, Jemima noticed what the cat was doing and strode over. It walked straight up to the mouse, broke it's back with one peck and swallowed it whole (that's when I stopped eating eggs).
You should have seen the look on the cats face.

One day, Jemima didn't come out of her 'house' but several large rats did (and were promptly shot).
We never did find much of her, just the odd feather.
I like to think that the mice got the rat mafia onto her.

The landlady was a bit miffed that I'd let her chicken die, until I reminded her about the ganja plants being eaten.
"Fair point" she said.
(EvilMeister, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 18:41, Reply)

Another cat tale
Many moons ago, shortly after getting rid of the psycho ex, a friend of mine bought me a kitten as a girlfriend replacement.
It was a lovely little tortoise shell with a white belly and feet.
The friend had arranged this a couple of weeks in advance, so by the time I come to collect kitty the friend has become the new Mrs EvilM (13 years later and still going strong).
Anyway, together we named this mad ball of cuteness Scatty as she, quite frankly, was.
The new Mrs EvilM lived in Borough (south London to those not in the know), so I had to pick up the little kitten and bring it back to my place in Rainham (this was back in my National trust days).
So, I gets to sarf London to pick up kitty and I'm presented with a cardboard box with newspaper cellotaped over the top. I'm assured kitty is sleeping and is quite secure in the box.
Mrs EvilM was late for work, so after handing me the box she ran off to the station leaving me to follow very slowy and carefully indeed (I didn't want to wake up the kitty).
I managed to get to the station without the cat waking up and all seemed well until I started going down the escalator. The box started moving and shaking in my hands followed by a loud wailing noise.
What happened next should have been predictable enough to me, but I was young and foolish in those days. Remember the part in Alien where Sooty comes out of John Hurts stomach? It was a bit like that, this kitty launched itself through the newspaper in a bid for freedom. I managed to get one hand to it to try and push it down. Instead, it ran up my arm, onto my shoulder and then on my head.
So I'm going down the escalator (during rush hour) with a crazy kitten howling, wailing and pissing on my head. It had sunk it's claws into my skin so I couldn't get it off until I'd got to the bottom and put the box down. Then with both hands I was able to peel it off and shove it back into the box. I had to cover it with my coat before I could contain it. Funny how there where hundreds of people going passed, but none of them stopped to help (maybe they couldn't see what with the tears in there eyes from all the howling laughter - thank god this was before camera phones).
Luckily it calmed down a bit and when we got on the tube it was happy to sit in the box and have it's head stroked by a couple of kids all the way home.

Scatty died last year of heart failure. It was a bit of a shock as she'd reached the age of 12 without ever slowing down one bit. Crazy little thing never did grow up much in size and used to follow me about everywhere (and drove me mad in the process).
Still miss her loads *sniff*



poof
(EvilMeister, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 18:10, Reply)

Never Underestimate The Reach of The Mastiff, Goose
Goose my dog is a Mastiff. When he was just about a year old, I lived in NYC and had a really great brownstone/apartment. He had the run of the place while I was gone, but tended to stay nearest to the kitchen.

Not wanting to tease Goose, I was very careful about not leaving items within view on the kitchen counter...until one night I needed a phone number from the yellow pages and left it sitting on the counter, within full view of Goose. Bad idea.

I came home from work the following evening, somewhat in a rush because we (Goose and I) were heading south to Maryland to spend the weekend with my family and I wanted to get on the road.

Goose had obviously been bored and removed said yellow pages from the counter and proceeded to rip every single page out of the book. I'm not kidding. EVERY SINGLE PAGE. And there were not TWO pages stuck together. He ripped them out individually. Literally close to 1000 pages.

Then, in a piece of interior decorating that I would gladly have paid to view, he placed the collected removed pages ALL over the living room floor. Literally COVERING every square inch of the floor. You could not see a stitch of hardwood no matter where you looked.

When I came home and saw it, I anticipated he would be scared. He wasn't. He trotted to the doorway of the living room, glanced in, as if to take in his work and then, glancing up at me, his tail wagged.

The bastard was PROUD of his 'yellow page carpet.'

[truth be told, so was I]

This is Goose showing some 'tude at someone getting too close to his bone. This was about 4 months prior to the redecoration of the room.


( Citadel Because the world needs less morons, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 17:51, Reply)

Fatdog and Adventure Ears, Part 7.
As mentioned earlier, in addition to two cats and two dogs, we also have a cockateil and a rabbit.

The cockateil is pale yellow with orange cheeks, and looks a lot like this one:



She does have one very odd habit- if I whistle at her she opens her beak and shakes her head while fanning out her tail, and sometimes will also duck forward and spread her wings at the same time. She does this very consistently- and it never fails to entertain.

As for the rabbit... she belongs to my daughter, and due to the fact that I'm divorced my daughter is not at my house every day. During the winter the rabbit lives in her room and stinks up the place a bit, but when the warm weather hits we move her outside. As the back yard is fenced in, I don't have to worry much about dogs bothering her- so what I do is put her cage on the lawn with the bottom tray removed so she can lay on the ground, and move her around every couple of days so she gets fresh grass to eat and leaves little piles of fertilizer behind. The bottom tray I put upside down on the cage to give her shade, and she has a little shelf she can sit on if it's raining.

Initially Adventure Ears thought that this was entirely too exciting and nosed all around the rabbit, until the rabbit charged the side of the cage and scared her. The dog was so taken aback by this that she turned her attentions to the bird, who hissed at her and tried to bite her nose.

Adventure Ears is now officially at the bottom of the food chain.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Tue 12 Jun 2007, 17:42, Reply)

...
Apologise for length in advance, but I've got a lot of crazy pets. Here's a small selection.
There's Rocky, the pony. We think he's a little bit gay. Attaches himself to other male horses, without a glance at the girls. Has also tried to mount a few.... He hates getting his feet wet, and dances round puddles like an eejit, squealing. He also won't wee on solid ground, cos of the splash that hits his legs. With the result that many times he was taken to shows in a horse box, we arrive, check him, and he has the most strained look on his face. Pure pain. So first job is to take him out to a place with lots of grass so he can relieve himself. I've seen him walk bow-legged with the strain of holding it in. He's great craic though. Checks your pockets for treats when he sees you, and takes the piss big time with my mother. (But not with anyone else).
I also had a Netherland dwarf rabbit, that was tiny, but big on attitude. He actually thought he was a dog. He was as sweet as pie with me, but attacked everyone else. Even sent my poor brother to the doctor when he latched onto little bros arm, and hung off him. For, like, AGES. Kinda funny looking back, so see my brother running round the garden screaming, with this tiny rabbit hanging off him. The rabbit went for walks on a leash and all. (Leash was a Spice Girls bracelet with wool attached. This was the 90's ok??)Humped everything in sight. One day, he was thumping his leg off the ground. I thought "Oh, isn't that what Thumper in Bambii does when he's scared?" Got down on my hands and knees to soothe him, and he did this 360 degree spin, showering me in piss. Lovely. He went missing once. I found him in my neighbours cabbage patch (this was in Ireland. People like cabbage over there) after decimating the cabbage. I took him out and said nothing....
Finally is my current cat. Well, she lives in the home country with the rents now, but she's still mine. :) She's loopy. She likes to play chase, I chase her up the stairs, she chases me down. She often tries so make a quick escape up the stairs, but can't make the tight turn so her arse ends up spinning in the wrong direction, and her front paws desperatly scrabbling. She sleeps in my bed. She seems to get nightmares, which she takes out on me. Once, she lept out of her sleep and landed, claws out in my head. My first reaction was to grab her and fling her on the floor, which led to a very confused cat sitting bewildered on the floor, and and very pissed owner bleeding from the scalp. She didn't come back into my bed that night. She was also a kitten when I had the rabbit. She hated him. She tried to stalk him, but he had like, super hearing, cos he'd cop her, and bounce over to say hello. She'd storm off and try from another direction. If she did manage a run at him, she'd be too scared to actually attack, so would just skim off his back and keep running. I doubt the rabbit even noticed.
So sorry for length, but I'm only new, so it's not my fault... or something.
Oh wait, I think I should have made that into a penis joke. Oops.

Edit: Just forgot, the cat also steals my fathers dirty underwear and hangs them in a tree in the garden. Kinky.
(Beauty School Drop-out, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 17:37, Reply)

The Magic of chutney
Actually, the cage I built was huge and could have fit three rabbits. I did this because the original one was clearly too small and I felt sorry for it.

Also, as I mentioned in my post, we explored all other avenues before leaving it. My preference would obviously have been to have it go to a new home.

Spraying it with Frebreze (not an aerosol btw) was probably a bit cruel. Guess I'm a C*nt.
(Peelmytangerines, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 17:26, Reply)

Phew!
Turns out my mog is quite normal. She's the least agile thing I've ever seen, and sleeps on her back, snoring like a good-un, doesn't meow so much as squawks, she dribbles when she deigns to let you stroke her, and if you're really lucky, she'll drop fur all over you, as she's quite long haired, but won't let you brush her.
She had nuclear-proof fleas last year that took TWO visits from Rentokill to sort out, she's always catching colds, and staggers round like she's drunk if she's forgotten to drink enough water. But she's my mate & I'd be lost without her.
( Whodathunkit, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 17:17, Reply)

Peelmytangerines:
You buy a rabbit; you proceed to build too small a cage in your son’s room for it. You then spray it with aerosols after which, deciding you are too cheap to have it killed, you abandon it.

Would you do this with say a dog? Or does your cruelty have a size limit?

Christ, this QOTW has brought some C*nts to the surface.

Edit: oh ffs the post below says it all.
( The magic of chutney Shakes it like an Instagram filter!, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 17:11, Reply)

Dartmouth
If you're ever in Dartmouth, pay close attention to the little grass verge at the side of the dual carriageway than runs next to the RN college.

You might see Guinea Pigs. There are dozens of them in the hedge there.

Wonder how they got there? ahem.

EDIT FOR CHUTNEY:I should make it clear that I didn't leave them there. Mind you, they've been there for years, so are obviously quite happy and breeding.
(inflateable, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 17:09, Reply)

Jasper the Cow

Bah, vegetarians. So bloody self righteous and lecturing they secretly think they're so much better than the rest of us because they've managed to survive despite eliminating from their diet foodstuffs which are packed full of lovely protein, fat and tastiness. Cry me a river you hippies. My ex-girlfriend Amy however has my complete respect for eating just leaves.

A few years ago she took on a temporary job as a receptionist / general admin assistant at a farm in Fife that also did B&B, hired out a refurbished shed for big events, quad-biking etc. Amongst all these activities they also had a small flock of cows*. One day I was told excitedly that someday soon there would be some calves being born and apparently Amy, with her exciteable nature, had managed to wrangle getting let out of the office and would be accompanying some of the other staff members to the barn where she could see them.

A couple of days later she came home quite sad that apparently one of the smallest calves didn't look too healthy, wasn't feeding and looked like he was going to die. This poor cow was the runt of the litter and it wasn't likely to survive. Worse still, since disposing of even a mini-cow corpse was effort, a farmer down the road was going to come pick up the poor thing for free and use him to feed his dogs. Amy was distraught.

She pestered her boss endlessly to try and save him - I've been on the end of this pestering many times and I pitied him. He quickly caved and the calf was given some sort of vitamin/protein/glucose injection. As he was so weak he hadn't ever been suckled by his mother and she had now rejected him so milk formula was made up. The first lot went down without touching the sides so another batch was made. This seemed to do the trick and it looked like a few extra days of rest and feeding had spared him from becoming I Can't Believe It's Not Winalot. As Amy's persistance had saved the poor sod she was allowed to name him. He was called Jasper.

Later when a vet examined Jasper it turned out he had a hole in his heart but he was fine enough now and he just wandered around the field contentedly. He made friends with one of the bulls since he'd been shunned by his mother. The formula milk had to be made for him every day and Amy even got to feed him a couple of times. Apparently he excitedly and affectionately slobbered over the carrier of the milk and mooed for more when it was all gone.

Amy and I moved away from Fife but she kept in contact with the friends she'd made at the farm. The reality of the purpose of breeding cattle hit home a while later when she was told that Jasper and most of the other cows were to be butchered at the age of 18 months. This is farming in the UK folks (I can tell you that this farm was a bloody good one though who looked after their animals properly). Almost immediately Amy became a vegetarian for the first time in her life. If enough people gaz me I'll upload a pic of the little fella, he was very cute.

* - if you pass by a field with cows in it with a mate say,
"Look! A flock of cows!"
"*Herd* of cows."
"Of course I've heard of cows, there's a flock of them over there."
( djtrialprice, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 17:01, Reply)

We killed our son's rabbit in purpose
We go to buy this rabbit for our 6 yr old son. 'Just a small one please', we ask the wily pet shop owner.
"I have just the thing", he says. "These are 'micro-rabbits'. They are bred never to get bigger than a squirrel.
Excellent, we buy a small cage and all the rest and go home.
2 months later, we have the biggest freaking rabbit in history. It's the size of a small dog and can't turn around in the cage so it shits everywhere and kicks it out the sides.
So, I buy some chicken wire and wood from the hardware store and MAKE and big rabbit cage in my son's room. I have to buy special matting as it has neon yellow piss which stains the carpet. It chews through the TV cable. It chews through the corner of his bed.
I start to hate it.
It smells.
I spray it with Febreze.
It starts to hate me.
I get allergic to it, especially once a week when I have to clean out the monster cage with freaking white fluff flying into my hair and up my nose. Would my son help? No bloody way.
It has to go.
I put an ad in the paper - no takers for a monster white rabbit with neon piss.
We enquire at the vets - $90 for the lethal injection, $110 for cremation. WTF?
I sneak it out of the house in my jacket and we go to the forest. Bye bye rabbit.
Hopefully she got a good seeing to by a wild male rabbit before a hawk spotted a huge white meal and swooped down.
No guilt, just a clean house.
(Peelmytangerines, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 16:51, Reply)

My cat Jake
It sucks loosing a pet, Jake died young a few months ago, Elwood (his bruv) and I miss him loads.

A word of warning for you folks, name your replacement cat quickly. Dont wait until you can think of a cool name.

Because you wont.

So now its just me, Elwood and New Cat

Really.

Jake...more tail than cat

(Qualitypapers, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 16:14, Reply)

My dog...
Before we had it killed by the vet, my dog had reached the fine old age of 17. It was blind, deaf, had a limp, had had two strokes and had a skin disease meaning that all the hair on its underside had fallen out.

As a result it followed people around the house by the only sense it has left...smell, tracking their scent from room to room. While this could be annoying from time to time, you could also have a bit of fun with it by closing the door behind you, and waiting for the inevitable thud to come from the other side, as the poor things head bounced off the wood two minutes later.

I miss that dog!
( Furness, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 16:00, Reply)

Weasel
Weasel is a very good looking cat (although getting a little fat). He is also unutterably cute and rampantly psychotic in equal measure.

His reportoire of kills is extremely impressive, including bats, moles, frogs and various birds and fluffy rodents. He has also been witnessed attacking joggers and kids on bikes (he hides behind a tree a pounces on them, although I don't think he's ever done them any damage).

Anyways, we live behind a wood and one summer he realises that baby bunnies are good for a hunt. The first one he brought in was perplexing - where was it's head? We searched the whole house for hours until my wife finally treads on a pair of eyeballs and we begin to suspect that he has actually eaten it.

Sure enough a couple of days later we catch him chomping away at his next kill. He only eats the head, mind, nothing else.

23 baby bunnies later and funnily enough none the next year, can't imagine where they all went.
(ruminator Never knowingly overestimated, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 15:19, Reply)

Claws...

I want this 'HairyBaldy'...eliminated.


Yesss bosss...leeeave it to me...
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 15:00, Reply)

My cat eats squirrels
grey ones.

That are over half it's size.

You DO NOT fuck with my cat.
( Argh-wrath ... is a very lame Glorantha joke, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 14:48, Reply)

Cats
Cats are shit. Alright?
Frogs, toads and newts are where it's at.
Cats eat frogs, toads and newts.
So cats are shit. Alright?
(speculus, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 13:53, Reply)

Syrup & Sick
back in the day when my sis and I were allowed pets at home, we kept two black cats called snowy and ginger. (i know my sister named them, she isn't the brightest at age 4) They had a bed in the garage and were fed there (mum didn't like the mess in the kitchen and they were farm cats), so we kept their food supplies there.

Their fave food was little treat biscuits we kept in a golden syrup tin with the lid on so they didnt gorge themselves and be sick.

then next door got a tom cat, which was fine, he marked his terriority and then started invading our girls' space. they didn't like it and there were numerous fights.

as time went on we got more lax about keeping the lid on the tin, so the evil 'piss up every wall' tom cat decided that they would ideal for a snack.

tom cat was significantly bigger than our gorgeous girls and proceded to get his head stuck in the tin.

I came home from school to find tom cat wandering around the garage walking into things with a syrup tin stuck to his head.

My dad and i got hold of the tom cat (with a towel ppl - less scratches!) and tried to pull the tin off.

Tin was stuck, so we took the medium bolt cutters to the edge of the tin. tom cat is at this point getting more stressed, scratchy and spitty and still waving head from side to side.

we nip the edge of the tin and loosen it - tom cat realises he is free and makes a break for it. My dad is holding the tin which comes off at a fair speed.

The fecking tom cat had been sick in the tin and the delightful cat vomit was spraying out in a lovely arc all across my nice clean school uniform.

I wasn't to impressed being covered in warm cat sick and neither was my dad...

fecking tom cat never came back tho'!

and we saved the day for our gorgeous girls!



length - you know you love it
(twiceydrinker hmmm is it pint time?, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 13:51, Reply)

The miracle of modern veterinary surgery...
My uncle had this cat, he was called Jack. At that time, my uncle worked in construction and would take Jack with him wherever he went.

One day he was working on the roof of a 3-storey house. Jack decided to experiment with the whole "cats have nine lives, always land on their feet" thing and jumped off. Well he did land on his feet, and he did survive, but lost the use of his back legs.

Anyway now my uncle couldn't really haul a crippled cat around with him so Jack came to live with us. And, credit to him, he got over his disability remarkably quickly: he developed a technique of swinging his entire back end from side to side while pulling himself along with his front legs. He could get a pretty good speed up like that too. He took no shit -- he used to chase our (several times his size) dogs around the garden.

Then one time I came home from school and he wasn't around any more. My parents told me that they'd found an old lady who'd needed a companion, and Jack had gone to live with her. Not long after, they told me that the vet had operated on him and -- miracle! -- had restored the use of his legs. I was so happy for him.

It was nearly thirty years before it dawned on me that they'd been lying through their teeth: they'd had him put down and didn't want to have to break the news to me. What a dozy twat I was.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 13:50, Reply)

My daughter's hamster
It's my daughter's 4th birthday and I go up to the posh bit of Enfield and buy a beautiful loving black hamster and a hamster cage.

The hamster comes in a cardboard box that I place on the seat of my car as I drive down to Hackney.

Well, it starts battering away at the sides of the box so I put the box into the footwell of the passenger seat.

I got home, went into the house with the cage and then returned to the car. The hamster had bitten a hole through it's box and as I'd left the car doors open had fucked off into the street.

Fuck. Anyways its only 4pm so I'll go to a Hackney pet shop and get a replacement hamster.

I get to the pet shop and ask for a hamster. "OK!" says the young lad who's underage working in the shop.

Anyway he shows me this golden hamster in it's cage. "OK that'll do!" I say. He opens the cage and grabs the hamster which does not move. "Oh err he must be sleeping! I'll see if there are any others!". The hamster in the cage is clearly dead. Anyway he gets me another hamster from the back of the shop. And this is a Hackney hamster. It's got attitude, an ASBO and wears a hoodie. It starts screaming away as it gets put into its cardboard box but I think fuck it I can't let my dear daughter down.

Anyway I install the hamster in its cage and then drive into middle of London to collect my daughter from nursery.

My daughter's birthday is in November so it's dark by now.

As Im travelling along I look in the rearview mirror and I see the original black hamster cleaning its paws on the rear parcel shelf. Fuck me. I thought I'd beeter catch it and put it back in its box otherwise my daughter might freak out in the car.

So I stop the car and then suddenly get an inordinate fear of being bitten by this hamster. So I put on a pair of big ski gloves that I had handy and began to try and catch this fucking hamster.

So there I am, on a dark evening, looking for a black hamster in a black-trimmed car with a pair of black gloves on. Fucking genius.

Anyway I caught it after 15 mins put it in ots own cardboard box, nested that box into the econd cardboard box and put the fucker in the boot.

Anyway I picked my daughter up and was travelling back to Hackney and got at attack of guilt. What if the poor hamster was suffocating? I could have that on my conscience even though I was secretly thinking of murdering the working class Hackney hamster.

So I opened the boot and fuck me the little bastard had chewed through both boxes and was free in the car. Fuck it I thought.

So I start driving again and sure enough the little fucker was on the parcel shel again loking straight at the mirror - and I swear it was smiling.

Anyway I screeched to a halt opemed the back door and the hamster shot off into Newington Green never to be seen again.

2 days later my daughter leaves the lid off the cage and the mad Hackney gangsta hamster escape and comes a ropper in a moustrap we had down.

So we replaced it with a pair of the wifes tights all rolled up and she was quite happy with that (she thought it was having a really long sleep) for a couple of weeks until we got a third hamster.
(tonyhrx, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 13:34, Reply)

Bigpuss the cat
A very large cat once arrived at the family home. He decided to stay after my grandfather fed him smoked salmon. As we were short of imagination we called him 'Bigpus'.

One summer we were a bit worried that Bigpuss wasn't eating his food. Until my father chanced upon him eating a baby rabbit. He was that hard.

He was also a slut. Later on he lived with me and a mate in a very dodgy flat in Edinburgh. As were living on benefits the flat wasn't very warm. So he used to crawl into bed with one of us. And by the morning he would be tucked up in the other bedroom. The hussy.

He was also fond of waking you up by scratching your face in the middle of the night when he was bored. So one night my mate took revenge. He had to get up very early to catch a coach to London. As he wasn't very good at waking up he decided to stay up all night. So he locked Bigpuss in his room and spent the night giving him Abu Ghraib style sleep deprivation. Whenever Bigpuss fell asleep he picked him up and started to talk to the cat.

The cat seemed to survive as he lived to well over 20.
(woodchopper likes chopping wood, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 13:15, Reply)

Cats are great.
I own two cats. One is completely normal whereas the other can only be described as... unique.

The special one eats earwax. (I can't remember how I found this out, but every now and then I'll wake up laughing as the cat cleans the inside of my ear.)

It's also a rather fluffy kitty (some people have insisted it's half persian) and one day it wandered past our fireplace whilst wagging it's tail.

Suffice to say the end of it's tail caught fire and I had to dive off the sofa with a pillow to put said tail out.

(The cat was fine, wasn't bothered in the slightest and probably didn't even notice the drama unfolding.)

Also, it picks random bizarre spots to sleep around the house and changes them at random intervals.
This week: The bath. (Always cold + wet.)
Last week: Centre of the hallway near front door. (Always cold.)

Strange cat but it's great.
(tylrdiablos, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 13:02, Reply)

Brainless the dog
We once had a Ridgeback (great big sand coloured African dog) called Elsa. She was a bit lonely so we got her a friend. Another Ridgeback from a dogs home, and this dog was also called Elsa. (Its not a great surprise that they both had the same name. Ridgebacks used to be used for lion hunting and there was a lion in the film 'Born Free' called Elsa. Apparently). This new dog was a complete bimbo. She was beautiful but was completely stupid.

It got very complicated having two dogs with the same name. (It was quite efficient when taking them for walks but when you needed to scold one and the other looked very persecuted).

So we started to call them 'big' Elsa and 'little' Elsa. But that was a little silly as 'little' Elsa was still the size of a small horse.

So I called the new dog brainless. So often that she came whenever she heard that word. Brainless was her new name.

As an example of how stupid she was, when it was raining and time for her walk I used to stand at the top of the stairs. I then said in an enthuiastic voice 'Brainless, walkies' so she ran down the stairs and waited at the door. When she was at the bottom I shouted 'Brainless come here'. And she ran up. I then repeated the exercise for about 20 minutes. She was like the proverbial goldfish. No memory at all.

Thats it.
(woodchopper likes chopping wood, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 13:02, Reply)

Worried?? Me?
It was my first day at the new gf's family home, where she was babysitting the dog while her parents and siblings were on their summer hols. I'd never lived with a dog before.

This particular dog was a gentle soul, affectionate, liked people, but (like all dogs) had large and sharp-looking teeth.

Time passed, and teatime arrived. GF was aware of the need to feed to dog and had the means to do so, but knew that the dog's feeding time was 6pm, always had been. The dog seemed to think otherwise, however, and started running around in a somewhat excited manner. What GF didn't know is that while she'd been away at uni, her Mum had brought the dog's feeding time forward to 5pm. As 5pm passed further into the distant past with no sign of dinner coming, the dog became steadily more frantic.

By 5:45, GF was in the kitchen making our tea and I was in the lounge (alone). The dog was now running full pelt around the house stopping only to bark loudly and try to bite chunks out of the carpet. Eventually, she made it as far as me. Having run at me with wide eyes, dripping teeth, and having tried to take several good-sized chunks out of the carpet, she stopped dead in front of me, wild eyes staring at me, mouth open, teeth bared, growling.....

At which point GF called out to say "Don't worry, she's only hungry".

I'm still not sure exactly what it was she thought I might be worried about, if it wasn't that the dog was keen to eat something.

Anyway, 18 years later we're married with a dog of our own, so no harm done.
(patently Was somewhere else on, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 12:50, Reply)

Once bitten, twice shy
I read in last weekends Sunday Mirror magazine (I know it's shameful) about a postie who'd had her backside bitten by an Alsatian. The wound got really badly infected and she had to have four months off work, the reason? Two of the dogs teeth got lodged in her bum!

The dogs owner was unrepentant and argued that the dog was protecting his daughter! From what, junk mail? They should have put the owner down.
( abefroman skating on the thin life of modern life on, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 12:30, Reply)

cow
Not quite a pet, but animal related...

i was chatting to my housemate one day when she nonchalantly mentioned 'my dad's mate got knocked over by a cow you know'
The image sent me into spasms of laughter until she looked cross at me and said 'it's not funny, he's in a wheelchair now!'
Apparently he's a postie and was taking a shortcut through a field when he got charged. It was just the image of someone getting 'run over by a cow' that had me in stitches!
(jhm3lmb, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 12:22, Reply)

unhappy cat story (NOT FUNNY, NOT CUTE, quite long)
One night when I was about 9 or ten I cleaned my teeth and headed off for bed. On went the PJs picked up the book I was reading and was about to hop into bed.
I was taking back the sheets when I noticed the start of a fairly large, dark stain on my bed. Being too young to have seen the Godfather I didn't worry that it would be a horses head. Instead I kept pulling back the blanket watching this round dark stain get bigger the more the under sheet was exposed. Reaching the centre of this stain circle there was a slight lump under the blanket. Revealing the lump my young eyes rested upon a very, very prematurly born kitten. If anyone's ever seen one of those eggs cracked open when a baby duck has started to form you'll know a little of what greeted me. It had bulging eyes, no fur, was covered in and surrounded by dried blood.
My reaction was to run. Run downstairs and get my Mum. Mum was on the phone so I waited, the full horror of what I saw sinking in, still not even sure what it was that I had seen. I eventually burst into tears. Mum got off the phone and I told her what was wrong. She cleared up the mess and we went looking for our cat PD. She was fine, asleep in the shed and I got the spare room for a couple of nights.
I can still remember exactly what the kitten looked like and I think it was the unexpectedness of the sight that most of the fear came from.
I have had other cats before and since and they've all done massivly cute and funny things but nothing really sticks out in my pet owning history like the above incident.
(cannonfodder fodder for cannons on, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 12:08, Reply)

Disgusting
One day, when I was a teenager, I merrily bounded up to my dad while he was playing the piano. The cat was sitting on top, as was her way.

I plonked my foot on the keyboard and bellowed "Look, my feet got sunburnt and now the skin is peeling!", delicately removing a bit of skin as I spoke to illustrate my point.

"Give it to the cat" replied my dad, trying to complete his Chopin nocturne around my foot.

I put the bit of skin on my finger, proffered it to the cat who sniffed it and then, yes, ate it.

She wasn't even sick, although I nearly was.
(Pachey, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 12:06, Reply)

A tale of rodents
Well where to start?

Back in the day me and my sister had a herd of Russian Dwarf hamsters over the years. She got bored but I still loved them so got some more when our first pair died. The second pair were “guaranteed” by the pet shop to be brother and brother, so no danger of inbred babies, so we thought. Strange when one day I noticed one victimising the other, with the attacker staying down in the nest and the other poor rodent (obviously the hen pecked male) shivering up at the top in the remote dome thing of the cage. So I separated them and went to clean the cage out only to find 4 pink things about the size of a runner bean wriggling in the nest. Quickly put it all back together and the mother took them back. So we had 4 little cute dwarf hamsters running around, after a couple of weeks they were about the size your little finger. This kind of thing happened many times, I think we had 12 hamsters at one point, couldn't sell them fast enough before another litter was born!

After a few years got bored and moved on to bigger and better rodents! So we got a dwarf lop eared rabbit, dwarf my arse, he was enormous! Anyway he had been born to a family whose kids terrorised the rabbits’ cage so he was naturally traumatised and hence somewhat of a psychopath. We had these great leather gauntlets for hoiking him out of his cage to clean him because no matter how frequently we cleaned his hutch out he always sat in his poo and had dangleberries all the time. After a year or so he was too big for his hutch so we bought a deluxe hutch which sat on top of a run with an alpine style ramp down onto the ground. Awesome thing, but we soon found we had to dig up the garden and subvert his escape attempts by putting bricks underground so he couldn’t dig out. Natural rabbit behaviour I guess. Anyway he became even more mental, would be fine with you at safe distance behind chicken wire but remove the barrier and fangs and claws would be borne and you would be lucky not to get scratched. The years passed and unfortunately the big lovable bunny wabbit we had bought was too dangerous to let out.

We went on holiday and left him at a local pet shop to be looked after for a week. Came back to collect him and sure enough Marvin (for that was his name, as in Marvin the paranoid android from Hitchhiker’s Guide) was sitting on the counter, whilst small unattended children wandered helplessly around the shop! Very surprised at not seeing blood sprayed everywhere and child’s severed limbs on the floor we asked how he was so calm. The pet shop owner said he just picked him up and realised he was a big softie! Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?! He had sat on the counter for a week, being petted by people, being fed and generally having a wail of a time. Apparently all these years we had just picked him up slightly wrong, which resulted in him being pissed off and generally hating us. Other people could pick him up and he would just placidly sit and do nothing, generally lapping up the attention.

We were given an albino (so mental already) Guinea pig as well at some point and Marvin used to amused himself by chasing the petrified GP around the run and nudge him in the side with his nose, at which point the terrified little thing would squeal and run a few laps round the cage being hawkishly watched by Marvin. When he stopped for breathe, Marvin would sidle up to and then nudge him again. Hours of fun. Poor little wotsit. The guinea pig was old anyway and after a while did live a happy and peaceful life after Marvin got bored of the tormenting him they actually became quite close, sleeping together all huddled up in straw, awww.

A few weeks later my step dad’s folks came to visit with their bastard offspring of Satan Scottie/pug/hideous thing with the lower jaw that overhangs the upper jaw. Of course smelling a rabbit he went nuts by the cage trying to get it, I had forgotten to shut the ramp so Marvin wasn’t confined in his upper sealed hutch bit. Hearing the commotion he came hurtling down the ramp face to face with this damn dog, although safely behind chicken wire the shock was too much and he keeled over and that was it. Step dad’s dad never even apologised. Haven’t forgiven him for that yet. I am so sorry Marvin for not picking you up right and letting that little rat Dougal anywhere near your run, so sorry old chap :(

Sorry about the length and lack of a happy ending. He was actually an awesome rabbit, would probably have kicked the arses of the cats we now get in the garden. RIP fella.
(Stanlington Jobsworthy Smythe Last skived off work on, Tue 12 Jun 2007, 12:03, Reply)