For the love of animals

Animals have been an important part of my life throughout my life, starting in elementary school with a red dachshund, named Rebel.  Rebel lived to be over 18 years old and followed the entire family to Egpyt when we moved and was one of the last Americans to leave Egypt in 1967 during the 7 Days War.  My father had to eventually put him down which was the hardest thing he said later that he ever had to do, and refused to have any more pets after that.  I, on the other hand, found another dachshund, this time a black one that I named Studd, who I took to College with me.  Elon College (the College I attended) was located about 20 miles from an all girls College and Studd and I used to visit that College on the weekends and sit on a park bench just off one of the few paths that the students had to take if they wanted to venture into town.  Studd met more girls and had more dates than I did, as I recall.  When I left College after 2 years, we parted company and a very nice family adopted him.

During my first marriage, why stayed away from animals because we did not have the money to properly take care of them, especially when we went on vacations and would have had to board them in kennels.  However, after several years, we agreed to take a black lab because his owner (a friend to both my wife and I) needed to acquire alternative living arrangements for his black lab, Pepper, like I had to do years earlier with Studd.  Pepper stayed with us until the divorce and my ex-wife agreed to take him with her.  Pepper, was a spade female, who was full of energy and loved everyone.  Several times, we took her down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and let her run “free.”  She was an amazing sight, running in ever-increasing larger elliptical circles between the water and the cottages on the dunes.  During those years, the Outer Banks were 2-3 times as wide as they are today due to erosion from the Atlantic Ocean.

Before my second marriage, I made the mistake of thinking I could take care of a yellow lab and still go to work during the day, by creating a barricade in the kitchen behind which he would stay and play until my return.  Much to my amazement, my idea could not have been farther from reality as shortly after the first week, I came home to find all of my kitchen cabinets “chewed-up” to the point that they had to be replaced.  Cinnamon was also a spade female and was very loving and full of energy and one day I left her outside in a fenced in area and when I came home from the grocery store, discovered that she had been stolen.

My second wife and I, after living with dogs in our first marriages, have decided to raise cats as pets, which by the way, are much easier to care for than dogs and while they do not always have the same affection as dogs, they still provide more loving than we deserve.  Today, we have 4 cats, 1 female and 3 males, all of which have been “fixed.”  The female Kelly (a calico), is the oldest and is the mother of an earlier yellow tabby named Nikki that died of a heart attack while my wife and him were playing in the living room.  Kelly lives outside but has a magnetic entrance into the garage where she sleeps and remains protected from the winters and the neighbor’s cats.  About 3 months apart are Tippy and Chazy, both yellow tabby cats, that look so much alike that one might think that they are brothers from the same family, but one came from a shelter in TN and one from a shelter in KY.  Then, we have Piper, an original pure bred Siamese that we actually purchased in KY because we thought he was still a kitten.  Piper was much older than we had first thought and had not been handled much by his first owners.  It took me almost 5 months before he would allow me to pick him up while I were living in KY and returning to TN on the weekends.

All 6 of us, my wife and I and 4 cats now live in East TN and I cannot ever imagine being in a mental state where I would not want to have some type of animal in my life.  At the present time, I prefer cats as they are the easiest to care for; but, having 3 males just over one year old was probably not the wisest choice to make; however, I would not trade any of them.  Sometimes they sleep with us and sometimes they don’t; but they are forever curious, entertaining, and loving when they want to be.  Each one of them has their own unique personality and play very well together, respecting each other’s space when necessary.

If they live for 18 more years, these cats will be the last animals I own.