Pets

I know this blog was originally intended to be for art lessons, but I can't resist writing about my pets. You might hear us (my husband and I) refer to them as our kids on occasion, which is completely dorky I know, but it feels like we are parents the majority of the time. So just humor me a minute, will you, while I exploit them?

This is Misty, one of our first pets. My husband left for deployment soon after we got married, and I convinced him that I needed a companion while he was gone. We went to the shelter one day and returned with two very messed up cats. Misty has a stub of a tail and hid under the bed for the first 6 months we had her. She's finally coming around now, after 3 years.

This is Belle (french for beautiful....ironic since she had a crusty bald tail). She's quite the cutie, and she cuddles and purrs all day (and night) long.

Fast forward about 2 months, and I get an email from a lady from church. She has this stray cat on her street that she found near death and paid $400 for emergency surgery. Needless to say she can't justify putting it back on the street, so will we take him? Somehow I managed to talk my husband into it, and before the day is over, we have a third cat (in an apartment that our landlord said could house one cat and one cat ONLY....oops).

Meet Sarge (not sure how to spell it correctly; its supposed to be short for sargeant). Thank goodness he eventually got tired of lounging around in the bathroom sink.

Then along came Jack. After we bought a house and my husband was out of the military, we briefly went nuts and decided it would be in our best interest to get a dog. Oh we were so naive. This dog has wreaked havoc in our home ever since. Within a month he had destroyed our carpet, mutilated his iron cage, killed most of my house plants, and emptied our checking account. So what did we do?

WE GOT ANOTHER DOG, duh!

You could say Bizzy, which is short for Bismark (the shelter named him), completes Jack. They wrestle together, run together, eat together, sleep together. Heck, they even chew our stuff up together! Just the other day I got my out-of-state teaching license in the mail, and put it on the coffee table still in the envelope. A few days later I found it under the coffee table with a large hole in the middle. Who knew a piece of paper worth $40,000 could be so delicious?

All in all, though, we love our animals very very much. They bring laughter into our lives, and have strengthened our patience like you wouldn't believe. Someday we would love to have real kids, but until then we'll keep enjoying the family we've got, hairballs, bed-hogs, and all.