More tails (groan)
All my life I (or my immediate family) have had pets, mainly feline, but a few others too.

The earliest I can remember was Kim the dog. She was a Jack Russell crossed with a Springer Spaniel, loving as anything and bouncy as hell- at least until athritis slowed her down. She wasn't too prone to doing stupid or amusing things, but had a good trick where she would snap flies out of the air. This continued to the end of her life, in spite of having got a few wasps- these would result in her pawing at her mouth and shaking her head vigorously, like an unsuspecting 18 year old who's just necked polmos...

There was Flopsy the rabbit. Like many of the species, he was evil distilled into a ball of white fur. He chewed electric cables, got hit by cars, and still lived. Like any lonely male of a species, he got... urges. One day we found our poor diminuitive tabby cornered, with the psycho rodent trying to mount her. Incidentally, this rabbit instilled such fear in the young Nedson that one night I woke to see a white object bobbing around the room, and screamed until the entire household came to see the cause of the commotion. It turned out to be a balloon. I didn't mourn the day he finally was killed by a car (probably while trying to mate or fight with it).

Tom was a stray black Tomcat who loitered around our house for weeks before being let in. He was a demon hunter, and would come back with enormous rats. He'd also bring in live frogs, which we decided he must be friends with. However, the most impressive catch he ever had was a whole black pudding. Shortly after moving from the country to the town, Tom disappeared one night, never to return. I like to think he went back to his froggy chum.

Barry was one of two cats we got a while after Tom disappeared. Barry was (and still is) very stupid, and very male, in spite of being neutered. However, he started getting fed tuna by a neighbour, and so we decided to shut him in the house to try and keep ownership of him- we were fed up of only seeing him when said neighbour brought him back to us whenever he needed to go to the vet's. So, the cat flap was boarded up, and a litter tray placed. As things went, the high protein tuna diet had made Barry into a walking ball of muscle with legs attached, so he simply ripped the boarding off the door, and left. I see him occassionally on that b*stard neighbours doorstep.

My mum had a parrot for a while (until she realised just how allergic to birds she is). As anyone with close experience of them will know, Parrots are really quite intelligent, and I'm sure they have a sense of humour. And they don't only mimic voices- Patience could ring like a telephone, mew like a cat and drip like a tap. As a demonstration of her memory, even though it was a year or so between losing Tom and getting Barry & Humbug, when Patience first saw the kittens she called out "Tom!". However, she wasn't to develope a friendship with these new cats the way she did with Tom (a relationship based, I think, on the fact that Tom was too scared to move when she sat on his back and nibbled his ears). On one occassion, Patience was perched atop a cupboard when Humbug walked in. Patience picked up a biscuit barrel next to her, and dropped it on the cat. Such events were normally followed by a bobbing of the head and a chuckle. Another day, Humbug wandered in and mewed for attention. Patience looked at him, and declared "You've been fed".

These days I have two very loving moggies, who having been born feral are the dominant cats in our street, but are gentle with people (and above all, Little Miss Nedson), and only really stupid at the normal cat level.

Sorry about the length, but my diet's helping me lose the girth.
(Neddy Nedson is nice really, Fri 8 Jun 2007, 13:16, Reply)