Flashback Friday #215

Non-Canine Pets


A warm welcome to all who have ventured this way.

I Have written about the dogs I had when I was growing up. I've also written extensively about a certain dog named Peanut. I think the only other pet that I've discussed was my guinea pig named Whooper. There were a few more, but not enough to do separate posts on each one.

After Whooper passed, I talked Mom into getting another guinea pig. I had the cage, water bottle & food already. There was no reason not to use them. I think she agreed because she didn't want me to catch another rat (see the guinea pig link above for more info). We went to The Westerville Mall and bought another one at Petland. I remember that it cost $4. I picked one out that was the spitting image of Whooper and named it Whooper Jr. (creative bugger, wasn't I?). Like his predecessor, I trained him to squeal whenever I would holler out "Whooper!".

Alas, he also passed and Mom said that we were buying no more. Luckily, Dad had a friend that was moving and looking for a home for his son's guinea pig. This one looked nothing like either of my Whoopers. They were both dark brown while this one was all white. He had been called snowball, so I continued to call him that. Once he passed, Mom made sure the cage left so there would be no more rodents in the house (at least domesticated anyway, we had mice galore).

Seeing that we had mice, perhaps that's how a cat came to adopt us. You don't own a cat, it owns you. This cat found a hole that it could squeeze into the basement through (we had a dirt basement and Dad was always going to finish it with cement blocks). It made it's way upstairs and hid in my walk-in closet. Since everybody in the house had stuff stashed in my closet, the cat went unnoticed. At least it did until the sounds of several tiny mews emanated from the closet.

Upon closer inspection, I discovered a litter of five kittens. I'm sure momma didn't have to venture far for food seeing the mice problem that we had. My folks allowed them to stay for a while, but then found a home for all of them down the street with a crazy cat lady. I think she must have had at least three dozen cats.

The only other non-canine pet that I haven't spoken of is the tank of Sea-Monkeys that I had. I bought them through an ad in a comic book. They had grown to a good size when an accident befell me and them. When I hurt my ankle skating , I was on crutches for a while. One day while hobbling across my room, the tank was knocked over and my Sea-Monkeys perished.