I just read that Rainbow Bridge thing.
Anyone have a strong anti-emetic I could take?
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 19:13, Reply)

Ex girlfriend's cat
was a bit skittish, a bit nervous, a bit shy - plus all the other traits that made it a cat.

The feeling of mutual mistrust gradually dwindled into acceptance; I accepted it's idiosyncrasies, it left us alone when required.

But, I never, ever dreamed that I would ever, not in a million human years, be jealous of a cat. The gf simply loved the cat more than me.

What eventually transpired confirmed the fragility of the relationship, and convinced me to leave her, and her cat. One afternoon the cat went out on the window ledge (5 th floor) which scared the bejesus out of gf who gently began to cross the room whispering her name in an attempt to get her back in. Naturally, cat slipped, gf screamed, I said wtf from another room, ran to gf who was by now in floods of tears. No, actually WAILING. I have to say when I found out what had happened I felt 'o jesus is that all', but instead did the gentlemanly thing and tried to console, get tissues, take her downstairs and see what was the result. What we eventually found out (after talking with neighbours and even quickly asking the advice of the nearby fire brigade) was that a shed adjacent to the building with an old plastic roof had broken the cat's fall, creating a rather Tom-and-Jerry cat-sized hole, and kitty was, amazingly, fine.

The wailing did it for me. I just couldn't believe the wailing. Over a cat. But annyhoo, they are still very happy together, I guess.
(roysin, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 17:08, 31 replies)

A nearby village has indoor boarding kennels.
They've been so popular that they ran out of room for expansion, but rather than move, they've opted to build a few more levels on the building to house the tenants.
( Muns, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 16:02, 1 reply)

My uncle had a Commodor computer.

(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 15:51, 8 replies)

I won a goldfish at a school fete
I loved my little goldfish, as I had won him by chucking a ping pong ball into a goldfish bowl, all by myself. I brought him home in a plastic bag, all excited, and happily moved him into his own bowl where he swam around, exploring. With excessive originality, I named him Goldie.

Next morning my parents came down to find the fish floating on top of the water, clearly dead. Disaster! My mum distracted me while my dad rushed out to the pet shop to get a replacement. He carefully replaced the dead fish with the live one, signalled my mum, who then asked me if I wanted to see how Goldie was doing. "Who's Goldie?" I asked, and went back to playing with Action Man. Ah, the fickleness of youth.
(Smale is stuffed, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 15:27, 2 replies)

My cat
Is better than yours
(Mean Mad Mutski, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 15:13, 3 replies)

I just Googled the Rainbow Bridge Poem (as per post below)
Fucking vile sugary nonsense. Maggots and worms get us in the end.
( Ken Oath, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:58, 7 replies)

I used to have a pet snail
A giant African land snail, no less, the largest snail in the world. I had him for about 8 years, then when I went travelling around the world I left him with my sister to look after - she had around 20 snails of her own at this point.

When I got back I visited my sister and popped out into the garden for a fag after the long drive. There, nestling amidst the rockery, was my snail's empty shell - he'd died while I was away and she was building up to telling me :(
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:57, 2 replies)

I remember when two boys were found rubbing oil into the school cormorant.

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:55, 5 replies)

Tweeter birdy.
When I was in my late teens my step-dad found a fledgling crow in the garden -- it looked as if it had tried to fly out of the nest, or had fallen, but didn't have quite enough feathers to fly properly.
Now, my step-dad was a proper twat and generally a cunt to people but he had a soft spot for animals. So, he decided that we would raise the bird until it had grown enough feathers that it could fly off.
Every day my brothers and I would catch worms and insects to feed our little pet and, as his feathers grew, we'd take him outside and let him glide from our fingers to the ground.
After a couple of weeks of this he started to get stronger and would fly around the garden a little, albeit getting slowly closer to the ground.
A week or so after that, we were beginning to get ready for his inevitable flight out of our lives. As we fed him for, possibly, the last time there was a commotion in the back garden so we put him down to look out of the door. Quick as a flash, one of the cats pushed his way from inside the house into the utility room we were in and, in one loud crunch, grabbed our little friend and managed to squirt blood three or four feet across the floor.
I still like cats though.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:55, Reply)

When I was doing my A levels our form room was the biology lab.
There was an empty fish tank on one side of the room, so one afternoon a load of us went to buy goldfish. All the girls gave theirs stupid names like Twinklefin and such, and I called mine Barry, which they didn't like for some reason.
We hadn't really thought through how we were going to look after them during school holidays, so we came back after the first half term of the year to discover that Barry had cannibalised his tankmates. The girls screamed, some cried, I laughed my arse off.
( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:53, 1 reply)

Something about brain tumours.

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:49, 3 replies)

Once took some bottles to the recycle bin.
They were PET.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:48, 1 reply)

Rather than post someone elses stuff and claim it as my own
Here's a nice selection I found online: - snipurl.com/morepet
( Muns, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:27, Reply)

I just read the Rainbow Bridge thing mentioned in the question
I hope the rooster I used to have isn't waiting for me. I killed him and ate him, and I don't want a rooster's immortal soul seeking revenge on me in the afterlife.
(sabre-tooth monkey, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:23, 1 reply)

The Bird Doctor
A mate told me this story years ago and it still cracks me up when I think about it... it's not strictly about a pet, but hey :)

Back when he was about 8, my mate and a few of his friends were out playing, when they found an injured young bird.
"I know, we'll take it to my dad, he'll know what to do!" proclaims my mate. Off they run to find his dad, who is out in the back garden.
"We found this bird, Dad! It doesn't seem very well, we thought you'd know what to do!"

His dad carefully takes the young bird from his son, sees that it has a broken wing and is beyond help.
"Yep, I know what to do with it" he tells the group, turning and throwing the bird with all his might against the wall of the house, killing it instantly.
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 14:21, Reply)

I start reading these stories, really, I do,
But by the end of the first line it always occurs to me I am simply not interested in someone else's dog or cat.
(username failed moderation, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 13:56, 8 replies)

Mrs Nesbit
Mrs Nesbit was the hamster I'd gotten from uni. We'd been doing a behavioural experiment involving positive reinforcement with sugar.
Afterwards, we were told if we could find the hamsters homes we could have them otherwise they were going to hamster heaven. So we each
took one of them home.

I soon found out I'd taken the Houdini of hamsters. No matter what I did Mrs Nesbit would always find a way out. However his massive
sweet tooth, developed by the reinforcement experiment, was his downfall. He'd only ever get as far as the packet of rainbow drops
on the book shelf and would more often than not be sat in the bag eating them.

My mum has always been petrified of animals and for the two years he lived, she was constantly on edge thinking that every bit of hair,
fluff or movement she saw from the corner of her eye was Mrs Nesbit on the run again.
(FootOfTim, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 13:08, Reply)

If you like this QOTW you should check out an author called Terry Pratchett.
He has loads of Morpork stories.
( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 12:34, 4 replies)

I feel excluded as I've never been there.
Although I did once consider going to Blyth, which is near.
( Muns, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 10:39, Reply)

I once tried to form my own rebel group by adding some formicidae to budgie food.

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 9:56, Reply)

We had a black cat.
My father named her Medes, because she wasn't a Persian.

(This is true - my dad's one of those "witty" types).
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 9:42, 2 replies)

Tagged
Sometimes to mix things up a bit me and a mate who also has dogs will drive somewhere different to take the mutts for a walk. This one time we parked up in the car park of this lovely country pub where the plan was go on a huge walk then sit in the bar (where they allowed dogs) let them dry off so the mud (it was winter)will end up the the pubs carpet not ours.

We had a great walk and Boris my collie had a massive branch in this mouth (he loves a stick does our Boris). This stick was about 4 foot long and he had pulled it out of a bog so it was dripping with gooey mud. We got back to the country pub car park were there was a large group of people going into the pub to eat (their Sunday roasts were excellent) They were all dressed up very smart and Boris trotted passed them all and managed to smear gooey black mud over the backs of every leg along this line of people. I don't know how but nobody seemed to notice. So we quickly loaded the dogs and got the fuck out of there
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 9:34, 1 reply)

Sonic The Hamster
Growing up I went through a few hamsters, despite my best efforts to care for them they would usually die prematurely. I discovered Sonic cold and stiff lying at the bottom of his cage, seeing how distraught I was my brother tried to convince me he was just hibernating, to the point where I think he started to believe it himself. After I went to bed he took Sonic down to my Dad who examined him before declaring

"No. It's fucked."

Then he threw him on the fire.
(kendohmassif Fritzl Burger Monkey Chode, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 9:34, 2 replies)

Millie and Buster and Millie and Buster
Years ago, I went back to my hometown to visit family. While visiting the local Ikea, I found a basket full of toy stuffed cats. They came in two colours: striped yellow and grey with white stomach, which is nearly a perfect match to my own cats waiting back home. We bought one of each and left them on the bed in the guest room, where my parents' dog roughed them up and threw them onto the floor, maybe sensing they were his competition (but probably for a much more logical instinctual motivation). Prior to kicking them out of bed.


After the trip they came home with us and met the real cats, beginning a very strange relationship. Here's the four of them all together (staged).


Over the next few years, every once in a while I'd come home to find someone had mysteriously brought the stuffed cats over to the eating area, often leaving them mouth-down in the food or water bowl. This didn't interest me the first dozen or so times it happened.

I moved to a new apartment that had an ant problem, so I set up a small table for the cat food bowls and water. This now meant that not only would the toys have to be brought over, but they'd have to be lifted up a bit too.

Then once my parents were visiting me, and I specifically remember putting both stuffed cats on the couch and we went to a nearby market for lunch. When we returned, both stuffed cats had been moved to the table, and one was face down in the cat food bowl while the other one was lined up behind it.

This has happened many more times.
An older picture from a previous apartment
Again Again Again Again Again Again Again Again
And after what looks like a pretty wild cat party.

Of course I'm not going to believe these things are coming alive while I'm gone, but why are the cats doing this? I came up with two equally ridiculous theories:
1. They thought these things were real cats that needed food, or would become real cats if they ate.
2. They considered them like voodoo dolls, in that anything that happens to the toys happens to the corresponding cats. So, feeding them would somehow sustain the living cats.

I used to set up my webcam at home so I could watch my cats while I was at work, and also occasionally play YouTube clips for them of things like bird calls, laughing hyenas, and lions roaring in order to get their attention. Once, I witnessed Buster attack and carry off his doppelganger. When I got home it was at the table.

It was pretty violent and he was shaking it in his jaws as if trying to bite off a piece of flesh. I later read somewhere it's common for cats to collect objects such as toys that they like and to store them where they eat, so I guess that's case closed. Still, it's been pretty weird to watch this behaviour in them for the last few years.

Millies (plus some damage to my wallpaper) and Busters
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 6:08, 1 reply)

I went to Newcastle once

(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 5:44, 4 replies)

The dog that almost wasn’t.
A long one...

About 2 years ago, my small daughter become interested in a particular website that listed RSPCA dogs for adoption.

The site shows photos of each dog, and gives a cheery description of each one. One particular dog caught our eye, a Husky/Cattle Dog cross. Stocky, pricky up ears, lovely markings. Her name was Sasha. A quick call to the RSPCA established that, yes, she was still available. She had been born on a farm, but thanks to her Husky heritage, had a very unfriendly farm habit of “hunting” all the animals, so was given up for adoption. No problem, we live on a decent sized suburban block, and have no other animals, save for the incessant Brisbane possum population that climb into the yard and eat everything in the garden.

The next day, while the 2 older kids were at school, myself and smallest Oath son travelled to the RSPCA dog shelter to procure Sasha. It was going to be a triumphant homecoming, new dog for the kids to play with after school, Walkies of an evening. Happy days.


Now, smallest Oath son is blessed with a few challenges in life, non-verbal, cannot understand a lot of his surroundings, and has the attention span of a gnat. Autism writ large + healthy streak of ADHD. Good times, in my household every day is an interesting adventure. Whatever, he’s part of our family, so he goes wherever we all go, even to RSPCA shelters.

Anyway, we arrive in the family wagon, newly purchased leash, collar and water bowl at the ready. We enter the office and introduce ourselves.

Before long Sasha has been let out of her compound, and is sitting next to us. She is silent, showing the 1000 yard stare of all long term inmates. She tolerates our pats, and the tail slowly starts to wag. A delightful, quiet dog. Fur as soft as a cat thanks to her breeding heritage. It was easy to pat her, and she nuzzled for some more attention.

By now, youngest Oath is very excited, lets out a long piercing scream (normal speech pattern for him, it usually means “my word, I’m a bit excited at the moment” or, maybe” One is rather hungry, could you please furnish me with some victuals”).

Anyway, just as we are handing over our money, the RSPCA lady suddenly says, “No, you can’t have this dog. Your son will hurt her”. She was obviously unsettled by youngest Oath’s noise. No amount of reasoning or pleading could change her mind, and in hindsight, I don’t blame her. Most people find his extraordinary noise level confronting.

Sasha was oblivious to it. It was just the RSPCA lady being extra protective, but still, a kick in the guts.

Now, I love dogs, and was so looking forward to the kids enjoying growing up with the unconditional love of a dog in their life. But, it wasn’t to be. We drove back home, without Sasha dog.

I was deeply disappointed, but philosophical at the same time. It was just another episode whereby youngest Oath’s behaviour caused us to rapidly change plans, whether we wanted to or not. We’d had plenty of similar experiences, and well, frankly, there will be a lifetime of similar experiences to come, so, always keep trying, but better get used to it.

When we arrive back home, the older kids were disappointed, as was my wife. No-one blamed youngest Oath. It just was what it was.

The next day, I flew out to work, for a 2 week roster in the middle of nowhere.

After a couple of days, when I was briefly within mobile phone coverage, I received a message with an accompanying photo – Sasha sitting in the back seat of my wife’s car, muzzle out the window, happily snuffling in the breeze.

My wife had taken matters into her own hands, travelled to the RSPCA in her little car, breezily asked to see a dog called Sasha that she had seen on the internet, handed over the money, and taken her back home.

We’ve had her almost two years now, and she is definitely big part of our family. Loves us dearly, we love her, look after her needs, we all travel everywhere together.

She has a particular bond with smallest Oath son, his eating habits are a little, um, messy, so she happily follows him around, knowing that a few snacks will be on offer, whether by design or happy accident. Sometimes he is happy to hand over food, she gently takes it, tail slowly swishing from side to side in happiness.

I have never had a more loyal, trusting, obedient dog.

And last years’ tally was six dead possums, carefully stalked, dispensed with and happily eaten. Our garden has never looked better.

Sasha...reclining on youngest Oath's bed

( Ken Oath, Mon 4 Feb 2013, 3:29, 8 replies)

Budgie Bastards
I learnt how callous and petty people can be from a very early age.

My grandad was a nice if strange man. He was fond of budgies, and always had one, and would give them all the same name, that being "Peter".

He had a small house but a spare room that he let out to lodgers. One couple seemed nice at the outset, but soon turned out to utter cunts. They kept stealing his food and he couldn't leave money lying about. I was about eight when this occurred. The final straw came when they decided, for a reason I never discovered, to chop up my grandad's kitchen table. He told them he was going to the pub for an hour, and when he returned they wanted him gone.

He arrived back to find they were still there, waiting for him, all packed, to tell him the terrible news: His budgie had died whilst he was at the pub. To spare him the grief, they had buried it for him.

Even at eight I wasn't that dumb. Yes - after treating someone like shit, as a parting shot they had slaughtered his pet budgie. So chuffing petty and vindictive it's almost funny.
(jrd, Sun 3 Feb 2013, 17:48, 4 replies)

jasper
jasper was a cat who turned up at our house one day and made himself at home. despite the fact that she ordinarily dislikes any animal she's not currently eating, my mum really took to jasper and was the one who named him.
i, on the other hand, did not like him at all. he had creepy eyes and would stare at me as if to say "yeah, be afraid, i'm gonna eat your face off while you sleep."
this furry bundle of ginger malevolence slept in the kitchen in his own little bed. the kitchen door was closed tightly every night, to stop him prowling around the house and shitting behind the couch. at this time, my brother was going through a phase of klepto-annoyance, meaning he would nick my stuff just to piss me off. because of this, i had a lock on my bedroom door and locked it every night before i got into bed.
so, that's 2 locked doors between me and the cat. my window was closed tightly, too. how, then, did i wake up to find the evil little bastard sitting on my chest, staring at me and purring like a furry rapist? i flew out of bed and threw the little fucker out on to the landing, locking the door(again) behind him.
this happened three times, with nobody able to explain how this four-legged houdini of evil was doing it.

jasper left as mysteriously as he'd arrived, simply disappearing one day, never to return. i wasn't sorry to see him go.

i fucking hated that cat.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sun 3 Feb 2013, 14:13, 3 replies)