put another vote in for cats
I've always had 'em. Currently we've got two sibling Siamese named Izzy and Miranda who are... wow, I think they're turning 9 at the end of this month. Time fliiiiies.

Despite the fact that they're from the same litter, Miranda is skinny and angular and looks like a 'modern' Siamese, while Izzy has a round face and is enormously overweight, like an old-fashioned "apple-head" Siamese. No one really knows why.

Being Siamese, they're both very talkative, and like to hold conversations with people where they make a yowling noise, you repeat it back to them, they say something else, you repeat that back, and so on until someone gets bored. You end up having conversations like this:

cat: MOW!
person: MOW!
cat: RUH OW!
person: RUH OW!
cat: WOWOW!
person: WOWOW!
etc.

They never make normal meowing noises. In fact, since my previous two cats were also yowlers (a Siamese and a Tonkinese), I didn't even know what real meows sounded like until I made friends in school who had 'normal' cats. The first time I heard a normal meow, after having grown up with cats every day of my life, I had two thoughts. One, "why is it so quiet?" and two, "oh wow, that's what a cat sounds like."

Right now as I type this Izzy is curled up into a happy fat ball of Siamese next to me, twitching and snoring. The snoring sounds like a series of wheezy little whines.

When I die I'd like to come back as a much-pampered Siamese cat.

edit:



Miranda in the front, Izzy in the back.
( TheFelineAnarchist, Sat 9 Jun 2007, 7:32, Reply)