There are 5 animals in my life.
There is a bird. He's a Sun Conure. A small parrot. His name is Fred. He enjoys eating walnuts and almonds, screaming like a crow, and taking baths.
There is a black cat named Salem. He enjoys climbing trees and getting tree sap stuck to his butt.
There is a small ferrel-looking cat named Kola. She enjoys eating mushy food, people-watching, and sleeping. She doesn't like diversity or cats that are black.
There is a gray cat named Taz. He enjoys head-butting and books.
There is also a Siberian Husky, named Max. He enjoys eating cheese. He also enjoys walking. He also gets excited about car rides and going to the park.
Fred the bird and Salem the cat are my pets. I own them. Taz belongs to my mom and lives with my parents, respectively. Max is the family dog and also lives with them. Kola is technically my brother's cat, but she lives with me. Salem is my cat, but lives with my parents. This is where it gets complicated.
So technically, Kola is my brother's cat. But I'm her primary caretaker. I hope he never asks for her back, because I love her dearly. Also, she and my husband have struck up a secret love affair. Not in a gross way....sick. But she loves him. She follows him everywhere, and he doesn't know, but I hear him talk to her when I'm not even in the room.
Look at this. If this isn't love, then I don't know what is. Please click on this picture. You have to see her face.
Before Kola came to live with us, my husband and I lived in a small apartment. We actually weren't allowed to have pets. I wanted a cat though. So we went to the Humane Society and looked at cats. I wanted a black cat. I'll talk about my reasons for that some other time. For now, just know that I wanted one. I went on Petfinder.com to search for a black cat in the area. I found this guy. At the time, his name was Marx. Who names their cat Marx? This cat was not a communist. We went and looked at Marx and decided to adopt him. We had a 24-hour waiting period before they would let us have him. That's okay though. It gave us time to figure out a way to lie about our living situation. Since we were renting, we had to show the Humane Society that we had approval from our landlord to have a cat. But we couldn't have a cat. So we gave them the address of my husband's friend and told them that my husband's friend was our landlord. Then we called my husband's friend and told him that the Humane Society was going to be calling him. We asked him to confirm that he was our landlord and that it was okay for us to have a cat. I don't know why he went along with it, but he did. He didn't really understand what was going on until after the fact. In any case, we were able to take Marx home and I changed his name to Salem.
The first night was a disaster. We had nowhere to put the litter box so we put it in the laundry room which was right off of our bedroom. We learned that Salem doesn't like to bury his poop and his poop smells like a dead animal. I almost died when the smell woke me up. We then decided to move the litter box into the bathroom, which was fine. A few days went by, and then disaster struck. We came to find that Salem meows a lot. His meow doesn't sound like a meow. It sounds like a dog howling. We also came to find that while we were gone all day every day, all he did was sit and howl. You could hear him from the parking lot of our building. There's no way we could have kept him because the landlord would have found out from the maintenance guy who was over there on a regular basis. We talked to my parents and asked them if they could just hang onto Salem for a few days until we could figure out what to do. They agreed.
Salem got settled in nicely and my parents enjoyed having him there. Kola, however, did not. I did not know that animals were racist, but sometimes they are. Just like people. I know she hates him because he's black and I find that to be disheartening because I don't feel that we have led by that example. She'd scream obscenities at him when he was clear across the room. It got to the point where my parents couldn't handle it. So we took her, temporarily, to our apartment. That proved to be not only a good temporary fix, but a permanent one as well. Kola loved having her own space. No longer having to compete with food or have her butt sniffed by Max, she was free to live in her own penthouse apartment. After much discussion, we decided we'd keep her and my parents would keep Salem. He was happy with the other animals, and he enjoyed climbing trees in the back yard. Kola enjoys her space and quiet time, and she doesn't make any noise.
It's drama, I tell you. We've since moved and we still have Kola. She is happy and never tries to run away like she did before.
I love having pets. It's nice to have a dog or cat to snuggle. It's also cute to snuggle with Fred. Birds do snuggle. They are fluffy. Fred is fluffy, and he takes a bath every afternoon. Here he is taking a bath today.
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