Sponsored by Terri Giuliano Long, author of In Leah’s Wake,
and David M. Brown, author of the upcoming Man vs Cat
World Animal Day: 4 October, 2012
We're celebrating World Animal Day with a huge blog hop event! Yay!
Welcoming me home
Little eyes bright, whiskers twitch,
Purrs excitedly
High up on the road
Swifts soar as blue tits twitter,
Sounds of spring fly in
Hands up who likes animals? Hands up who lurrrrrves animals? All those
fluffy, feathery, cuddly, cutesy, intelligent, faithful, funny creatures who
share our lives and make our day. Mmm, I can see a big show of hands. Let's
give a big cheers for their day! Grunt, eeeek, mew, voof, grivvet, splish,
splosh, baa, moo, oink, neeeiiiigggh!
I love animals, especially cats. My first pet was a dog called Glen. I
can't remember much about him, as I was really little, but we
used to take him for walks along the marshes and fields where I lived. Glen was always chucking himself into the water whenever
he could and shaking himself all over us, like a big dirty shower. I recently
wrote a doggy character in a novel called 3 Heads & A Tail. I gave the dog the best
lines, the best love story, brains and adventure, and I
named him Glen. Recently, my dad told a story about this dog. My dad used to
work on the railway and there was a rail yard where we lived in Slade Green. He'd
hang out there with the other drivers and they were very friendly. I can't remember
if this happened there or in a pub, but Glen, accompanying my dad, decided that
he wanted to be a bit more human. Up he jumped on to the table and started lapping
from some poor guy's pint! He got himself banned. He was a character!
We had loads of animals when I was a kid. The best time was when I was
at Infants School and we had an aviary at the bottom of our garden. It was huge (or at least to me) and my dad built it. He bred a rainbow of budgies, which I thought I could
communicate with simply by winking, and little bluish quails that pecked along
the ground. The aviary was like a giant house of wonder. It had two doors. You walked
in, closed one, and then walked through the next, so the birds were safe. Inside, I'd hold out my hand and the budgies would fly around
tweeting and land on my palm, and look up at me. To a kid who loved animals, it didn't get any
better than that.
We then moved to Erith, to a house on the corner of a street. We didn't
have a huge back garden. It was kind of square, but my dad created a pond
(as he did wherever we lived) and filled it with fish. During that
time our animals included: 2 rabbits (Snowy & Harvey); 2 dogs (Penny &
Bianca); at least 4 cats that I can recall (Misty, Mitzi, Buster & Smokey);
another cat that someone asked my mum to take in, which turned out to be
pregnant; 2 guinea pigs; 2 red-crested black newts; gerbils, which started off
as 2, and sprouted; a cockerteil; a canary; some budgies (one was mine, called
Pip); numerous fish; a duck that my mum took in from someone who knocked on our
door, which vanished around Easter, making me very sad; and a tortoise called
Tonic - we knew this because his name was painted on his shell, and he wandered
under the garden gate one day, stayed a few weeks, and then wandered off, like
a travelling gypsy with a shell. Add to this the numerous birds that my dad
rescued from the garden, which would live in a box by the radiator for a while,
before being released into the blue yonder. Oh, and a frog that my mum saved from Buster.
As I grew up, our furry family grew fewer, but we still had many pets compared with most people. We almost had a house rabbit. It was sooo cute and
black, and tiny. My mum bought it during the week we were due to move to
Cornwall. Cue the chaos of moving, particularly chaotic
when it's about 250 miles away to the new home. Somewhere in the middle of the
journey, on the motorway, my mum realised that she'd left the bunny in the
toilet. Not 'in' the toilet (what were you thinking?), but in the room! He'd been put in there for safekeeping while the removal men were
taking out our stuff. Panic set in as my mum rung her friend to contact the
family who had bought our house. Happily, bunny was rescued and had a new owner. I
always wondered what it would have been liked to have a house rabbit.
My first pets as a grown-up were two cats called Amy and Kiwi. Somehow
they managed to get pregnant by the same smoky coloured tom (I could tell
by the markings of what came later!) when they weren't even 6 months old (that
taught me to get to the vet with a female cat asap!). I saw both cat births.
Amy was first and she helped Kiwi with hers. It was fascinating. David Attenborough would have been impressed. Amy had 6 kittens and Kiwi, who
was smaller, had 4. For 6 brilliant weeks I was greeted at the door by 10
stampeding balls of fluff and followed everywhere around the house. I'd wake up
every morning to them all sleeping on me. Bliss. Of course, I couldn't keep 10
kittens, but I had an excellent local pet shop, run by a woman and her
daughter, so 8 of my kitties went there. My mum wanted the ginger one with
golden eyes, whom she named Charlie, and I persuaded her to take the little
runt of the litter, who was a tough little fighter, called Lily.
Alas, I lost Kiwi when she was only 6 years old, but I immortalised her
in Kiwi in Cat City, and I'm still writing this series set in a world of
catizens.
Today, I just have one pet. She's 13 now and her name is Mogsy. I can't
imagine life without her. She's one of a kind.
I'll finish with a poem about two animals:
The fox and the mole
Let’s rob a bank
Said the fox to the mole
I’ve got mouths to feed
And I’m feeling the need
Ok, said the mole
But you know I can’t see
I can burrow real deep
But I might fall asleep
Well, said the fox
I can offer my cunning
I will find a way inside
And to you I’ll confide
Wake me up said the mole
When you discover this
As I’ve got a hunch
We’re in a credit crunch
So the fox went off thinking
How to rob the bank
And came up with a plan
While eating a cherry flan
Well then, asked the mole
What do you suggest we do
To steal all the money
But not do anything funny?
Aha, said the fox grinning
I’ll tell you what to do
Just burrow under the bank
While I drive up in a tank
Oh, said the mole frowning
I never thought of that
I didn’t know foxes could drive
Have you told this to your wife?
No, we have to keep this secret
Said the fox to the mole
As she’ll have my guts for garters
And that’s just for starters
So off went the fox and mole
To begin their bank robber life –
They rivalled Bonny and Clyde
Living it up, the law they defied
