My family are, quite frankly, animal mad.
I grew up with a plethora of furry beings and Mole's childhood has been the same.
I already had 2 cats when he was born, Tooshka and Set.
Tooshka I found in a cupboard at work, her Persian coat was so matted that she couldn't walk.
At the time I was working in a unit for severely disturbed kids, some of whom were very cruel to animals.
I rushed Tooshka to the vets, where she had to be sedated and shaved bald :eek:.
The poor thing had cigarette burns all over her body and was seriously underweight.
I took her home, fattened her up, had her spayed and when her coat grew back and she looked like a Russian hat, so I called her Tooshka.
Set's owner was sent to prison and one of the kids begged me to take the cat, so I did.
He and Tooshka became great mates.
When Mole was three years old, we were down by Camden canal feeding the birds.
A sack floated past, with something moving inside.
Me and a passing jogger managed to fish out the sack and found 4 puppies
.
Obviously some toe rag of a bastard had thrown them in so they would drown.
One pup had died and we rushed the other 3 to the vet.
The poor little things were only 7 weeks old.
Mole fell in love with the coal black one, so we kept her and the vet said he would find homes for the other two.
Mole called her Sooty after the glove puppet and home she went.
She was so small that when Mole's dad came home he thought it was a guinea pig
.
Mole's birthday came round and the idea of a guinea pig had taken hold, so Aged parents bought him one
For reasons known only to ourselves, he ended up called Dolly schmoff :oops:.
We had Dolly for about a month when we started to worry that he might be lonely.
The vet suggested a rabbit for company :confused:.
Happening to be in 'pets are us' Mole spotted a small brown rabbit with large chunks of fur missing.
On asking the attendant what was wrong with the rabbit's fur, she told us the other rabbits picked on her and tore chunks of her fur out; and so we ended up with Rags.:rolleyes:
Dolly hated the rabbit :eek: and so Mischief came into our lives to keep Rags company.
We now had 2 cats, one dog, a guinea pig and two rabbits...........sigh!
Christmas and Mole's grandparents thought getting him water dragons was a good idea o_O and so Mr and Mrs joined the growing zoo.
On a trip out with his dad, Mole came home with 3 tiny goldfish, so now we had The Lads as well.
Arnold Schwarzenneger (the mussel) was down to me as someone had told me they helped keep the fish tank clean.
So now we had 2 cats, a dog, a guinea pig, 2 rabbits, 3 fish and 2 water dragons.
Not content with filling the house with assorted pets, we also had crickets taking over the house, they being something the water dragons like to eat.
Of course there were always escapees, so the sound of crickets filled the air every night.
On having a friend stay over one night, he spent the night on the sofa bed in the front room and said he thought he was in a field. :rolleyes:.
Of course no home is really a home until one's son brings home 4 stick insects from school.
They needed looking after for the school holidays.
We had them in a tank and the thing they loved to eat was bramble.
Mole took to bringing bunches of bramble every day and before we knew it we had stick insects everywhere.
They climbed the walls, got into the lights, mooched across the sofa, much to Aged's discombobulation and generally made themselves at home.
By the time school started again we gave back 92 stick insects :eek: apparently the more you feed them the more they breed...........WHO KNEW!
