Lifescouts: Pet Owning Badge

I've had LOTS of pets. Mainly cats, because let's face it, cats are awesome. But I've also had rabbits and at one point I had a dog. While uploading pictures of each and every animal I've ever owned would take an incredible lot of time going through boxes of photos and scanning them in with a crappy printer, I'll go through a brief list:

We got Benji the shi-zu when I was a toddler, don't remember much of him, only that my mum got rid of him when I was 3 because he had a rather disgusting habit.

Gromit the rabbit was my first bunny rabbit and I remember distinctly a home video of me stroking him in a box when I first got him and then telling my brother "I'VE GOT FUFFY HANDS!" because I'd been eating trifle...sorry Gromit.

My first cat was Poppy, who I have many pictures of playing along with my weird child games - including her sat in my plastic oven and in a box of books with me. And me cuddling up to her while I'm fast asleep. Sadly she was the first of many cats to have her 9 lives lost on the road outside my house.

There were goldfish too. Dee Dee and Dexter.

Then there was Meggy - named after Meg from Hercules. A beautiful tortoise shell kitty who again loved cuddling up to you.

We then had a change in the form of Twinkle, my first hamster. Literally the most cute and cuddly hamster you'll ever have met. Unfortunately a 'friend' of mine from school left her cage open and she ran away never to be seen again.

We then got Sazzy. She started off as Salem because the lady we bought her from was adament she was a boy. It was only when we saw her getting it on with the neighbour's boy cat we realised she was a girl, so she became Sazzy. The problem with Sazzy was that she was half ferrel, so she ran away a lot. We moved house at one point and a few months later went missing. Another poor kitty to be killed by a dickhead driver, and my mum had to go and 'identify' her when the vets called and said a cat of her description had been brought in.

Me & my Ozzy

Blossom then came along, my second hamster. While she was cute, she liked to bite. A lot. Still, she lived a full 2 years without running away. And I have the awful memory of my grandfather tipping the contents of her little plastic house into a tiny grave in the garden.

Bubbles

Then there was my Ozzy, who've I've spoken about before  because he was such a big part of my life - we had him for 6 years, the longest I'd ever had a pet. Sadly he passed away by yet another dickhead driver a week before I turned 18 and he would have turned 6. I still miss him, and every year on the 29th April (the day he went to the litter box in the sky), I think of him.

Flopsy

Then there were bunnies. Oh the bunnies. Bubbles was a tiny, cuddly thing and was so friendly (at the time, I liked The Powerpuff Girls - hence the names) and then shortly after we got Flopsy, who was much bigger, but she was still beautiful. Sadly both my bunnies went to heaven within a few years, Flopsy in particular was upsetting given that Ozzy had passed away a few months before.


Currently, I have no pets as our landlord doesn't allow them. But my Mum has a cat, Sooty who she's had for a few years now, which makes going home such a joy, especially given how attached he gets. He has a few issues though, he suffers with OCD (yes, animals can get it too) and gets upset really easily if someone he's attached too suddenly disappears - my stepdad used to work as a coach driver and was always going away on trips, poor Soots missed him more than my Mum did!

Sooty at 12 weeks old (or just about)

We're hoping to get a kitten when we leave Northampton in the summer, provided we get a big enough place with a garden and the landlord allows us to, but I see nothing wrong with a cat. So, while I have no pets at the moment, I think I've have definitely earned my pet-owning badge.