Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Every month a group of six bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, and more!

Join us this month and meet our fur, finned, and feathered family members….

Disclaimer: This is LONG. Get a snack. Preferably a high-carb, high-protein one that will sustain you for a long period of time. 

You’ve been warned.

This post comes a little late for me, as I am recently animal-less…a situation I have not found myself in for the past 52 years. I feel like I peaked in my late 20s – early 30s when we had…17 animals. But I’m getting ahead of myself!

Let’s start at the beginning. I begged for a horse from the time I was five. Well, THAT was not happening, so I went through a “make do with this kind of animal instead” phase from like…age 9 to…19.

My first pet was a mouse. A sweet little grey mouse named Buggy. She had the typical tiny metal cage with the exercise wheel…but I barely ever put her in there. If I was home, she was out. The most fun was letting her ride in the collar of my shirt, hidden in my hair, when I rode my bike to the library (an almost every day event). Occasionally she’d poke her nose out from under her veil of hair…or her tail would snake across the front of my neck. I got a lot of good GASP-y reactions from people.

But mice don’t live very long. And I experienced my first pet heartbreak when I found her still little body in her cage one morning when I went to get her 🙁

After that I had a sweet little apricot hamster named Soft, who never lived up to Buggy’s memory. She was always a little skittish and liked to escape and hide. Then a beige and white spotted rat named Kendra…and she was also sweet like Buggy…but I don’t have as many memories of her. It was harder to take her places with me cuz she was larger.

It was interesting going through old pet pictures…I was surprised at some of the concurrences…animals I thought I’d had earlier or later, but then I saw, for example, Princess with Kendra, and was like OH! Huh!

I struggle a lot with the timeline of my life. Does anyone else have that experience? You THINK something happened at THIS time, but later you learn that it actually happened at this OTHER time. I actually started trying to plot it out on paper (I know, I’m a weirdo), NOW, before my memory gets any worse…and have been referring back to diaries and photo albums…but there’s a lot of stuff that was undocumented.

ANYWAY. Pets. Ha.

So, after Buggy and Soft, the first “large” animal I had was Airehart (Airehart’s Irish Victory, ha ha), the Irish Setter I got when I was 13. I feel like I just shared that story here in detail (all about how he was bought on the spur of the moment and was relegated to living in the backyard), but I can’t remember why I shared that. But I won’t tell the whole story again – I’ll just say, he was a wild man, always. Ha. He would have done much better to be allowed to live in the house but my mother was all “OVER MY DEAD BODY,” so…that never happened.

I loved having a dog. I loved training and going to obedience classes. Airehart would always screw it up for everyone else cuz he Just Could Not Stay Motionless for the three minutes required in the “long down.” He’d suffer silently as long as he could…and then he’d bolt…usually taking half the other dogs with him, running outside the ring (bordered only by string, which was a mistake) and across the show grounds.

Sigh. I’m sure people came to hate seeing us arrive at shows.

Airehart was with me through college (first time)…and he must have died before I was 20, but I can’t make out when exactly that was 🙁

I feel like I also shared the story recently of how I acquired my first horse, Elmer (J. Fudd, he owned a mansion and a yacht) without my father’s knowledge or permission. It just sort of HAPPENED. I was back from one year of college away (I didn’t go back for Year Two) and was working at a local hack barn (where you rent out horses for trail rides, sort of the bottom feeder of stables) – mucking stalls, feeding and watering, taking out trail rides, and teaching riding lessons.

He was a lesson and trail horse that had zero patience for inexperienced riders snatching at his mouth or bouncing on his back…he kept bucking people off….and he was going to be let go. To the killers 🙁

I’d been using him as my pushing horse (pusher: the person who leads the trail ride) and was In Love with him. So my boss let me pay him off $100 a month for a whopping five months and then he was mine!

For me, Elmer was a SAINT. Huge, gentle, comfortable, and bomb-proof. The perfect first horse. He instilled a confidence in me I’d never had just riding school horses at weekly riding lessons.

Next was Jeremy Andrew. Who was The Best Cat Ever. I always said if there ever was a cat who understood English, it was him, as he always seemed to know exactly what I was saying or what I wanted. Like Caleb.

He was also the first “not caged” pet that my mother actually allowed to live in the house. Again, not entirely sure of the timeline but I THINK that was after my father passed away when I was 22. Don’t know if there’s any connection there. I’m pretty sure she was the one who wouldn’t allow Airehart to live in the house. Maybe it was partly a concession to getting me to stay at home with her. Anyway, he seemed to know to steer clear of her and I can’t recall ever seeing him in her room. Interesting. But I also don’t recall her disliking him. I mean, what was there to dislike? Nothing. He was a perfect gentleman, always.

Jeremy lived to the ripe old age of 18, after I’d moved out of my mother’s house, after Russell and I bought our first house, got married, had Katie, and moved to houses Two and Three. He was with me for a long time and a lot of changes. And he was always a delight. He died in his sleep after a long, healthy, comfortable…and I hope happy, life.

Somewhere in there while I was still living at home, I had a number of birds: a cockatiel named Lucas Lorenzo (guess what my favorite show of the time was), a foster parrot named Jim that seemed to only be with me for a short time before I was able to re-home him, and several parakeets that are pretty forgettable (sorry, tiny birds, you were cute, but…), the rat Kendra, and I had stolen borrowed Russell’s dog, Princess, from his father’s house cuz…she was a diamond in the rough who deserved a happier life.

Princess was a STAR. She SHONE with attention and training. Judges would always comment on her great “doggy attention,” as she never took her eyes off mine. Even my mother appreciated her a bit and allowed her to stay in the house with us.

The truth was, she was Russell and his father’s dog…but she lived with me for..over a year (again, time perspective is not my friend), maybe two years…until Russell and I broke up for a year or so…and then his father asked for her back.

I was not quick to do that…but in the end, back she went. Sadly.

Eventually, after Russell and I got back together, and the father moved to Florida, Princess came back to me/us, but she was quite old by then…and was now one of many. She was bundled with Tippy, Russell and his father’s other dog, who also came to live with us in his final days after the father moved away.

I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Oh, I forgot about the fish, Chris and Fap, I had in my early teens. One time my friend Suzy came to visit me and insisted that milk baths were good for fish, so they were placed in the actual bathtub in milky water. Chris (or Fap, I don’t remember) died shortly after. The conclusion was that maybe milk baths aren’t good for fish.

While I was still living at my mother’s house (but she was spending the better part of most years with her family in Los Angeles), I got Kimberly Lynne the ferret. SHE was a PIP. If you ever need cheering up, Get a Ferret. She was a constant delight and source of entertainment.

She HAD a cage, but I only put her in there (sometimes) at night when I went to bed. She was (sort of) potty trained…which meant SHE would select a corner, and that’s where she’d potty.

She was highly socialized and I took her most everywhere with me. She walked on a leash and traveled well. She went with me to a big horse show in Kentucky and became the unofficial mascot of the riding team I was on.

She always cracked me up – her bouncy ways, her habit of sock stealing…her “run run run…get flat” routine. She was the most fun pet I’ve ever had.

When I first moved out of my mother’s house and in with my friend Mary, we were living at a house with horses, mini horses, goats, and a couple of cats. We took care of all of them in exchange for lower rent. So they were kind of like ours for the yearish that we lived there.

Jeremy was still with me at that point, and I got a Golden Retriever puppy from a friend. Tyler. He was adorable as a puppy but so mean to me, ha ha. Like a typical child, he was an angel with everyone else but terrorized his mother when we were alone. Sigh. Eventually, he matured and mellowed…and we also did well in the show ring (obedience). I can’t find any of those pictures, I’m sad! They’ll turn up eventually. He was a sweet dog.

Let’s see…when Tyler, Jeremy, Kimberly Lynne and I moved out of the house we lived in with my friend Mary, we moved in with Russell when his father moved to Florida. We were looking for a house and found a decrepit bungalow (ha ha, my favorite kind of house) with a 4-stall barn and just enough land to have some horses. When we got approved for the mortgage, we were possessed to adopt two kittens – Katie and Stephanie Elizabeth. We were TOLD they were sisters, but. Right.

Katie was not with us that long. When we moved into the house, she disappeared for like six months (this was back in the day when cats still went outdoors) and returned…with child. Well, kittens. She had three darling kittens…but I can only remember one of their names – Trudy. And they all had feline leukemia, as did Katie. THAT was heartbreaking…as we lost them all, one by one.

And then I named my not-fur child Katie…and I don’t think she (Human Katie) has ever forgiven me for that. It seemed like an honor to me, but…

Stephanie Elizabeth (The Beauty Girl) was with us for a long time after that.

When my boss learned we were buying the house with the barn, he offered me my “love of my life” horse, Robbie Stop. Robbie was THE handsomest man…but he was a HANDFUL…which led him to being treated pretty abusively by the trainer at the barn where I was working then. I guess it was a blessing he couldn’t stay sound and be the show horse my boss wanted, so he was offered to me and I snatched him right up.

Oh, backtrack. My horse Jackie that I got after selling my first horse Elmer (I couldn’t keep a horse right at that time and I found a young girl who just loved him to death), had just died in a horrible freak accident. Not to go into a lot of detail, but she flipped over backward, broke her neck and died in moments in front of my eyes with her head in my lap. It was a horrendous thing….she was a sweet sweet girl.

I think it was the combination of that…horrible loss…and our new horse home…that prompted him to give Robbie to me. “Oh and by the way, could you take Leroy, too??” Ha. Leroy (actually Le Roi, “the king” in French) was an old sweetheart of a lesson horse where I was teaching (now a nice show barn, no longer the hack barn of my humble horsey beginnings). And horses need company, so SURE, WHY NOT, THE MORE THE MERRIER.

Once we actually moved into the house with the barn, we took in a boarder, Kenny, whose mother had moved to Florida or Texas or something and just wanted him to live an easy life with nice people. That’s the best kind of boarder – they pay board but never show up. Ha. The money he earned up pretty much paid for me to keep the other two…as well as a pony, Penny Candy, we got for Katie (who showed up eventually).

Okay, let’s do a check-in. By the time we had Katie in 1991, we were married and had the four horses, Jeremy, Tyler, Tippy & Princess, we’d gotten a German Shepherd named Hunter…I still had Kimberly Lynne the ferret, we were taking care (for over a year) of a dog named Angel, of whom I was just not a fan, but I was so busy right then I couldn’t do much with her…she was HIGHLY ENERGETIC (think tightly wound spring) and behavioral. And I had gotten myself an African Grey parrot after my mother died. Spencer (Tracy). Oh, and I adopted two disgusting Persian cats that someone left in a dumpster in back of the animal hospital where my friend worked. Chloe and…something. I forget. We only had them a couple years before I found someone else to take them.

There was a LOT going on.

For the first time in my life, I felt fully animal-saturated. I couldn’t take any more in. And while Russell still wanted to be on the 5-year plan (getting a new dog every 5 years, so…he’d never run out? I don’t know) I was DONE and ready to downsize. Which I pretty much did for the next 20 years, only taking in two more animals in all that time. And by two I mean three. But two of them really took ME in, not the other way around.

Clyde started showing up after Russell and I had split up – we were now in our third house, no more horses, and I was done to “just” Jeremy, Stephanie, Hunter and Tyler. He started sleeping on our screened-in front porch on the coldest winter nights. So I of course started putting food and water out for him. So he of course stayed around more and more. I’d visit him out on the porch, and this giant cat was such a mush. After a couple weeks of him never leaving, I put signs up all over the neighborhood “Is This Your Cat?” No takers for two weeks. So I took him to our vet, got him cleaned up, checked out, vaccinated, and neutured…and brought him inside. Katie fell deep deep in love with him instantly and he let her lug him around.

And just a few days after the several hundred dollar vet bill, we got a call. “We think you have our cat, Bootsy.” BOOTSY? We were calling him Clyde. He was SO not a Bootsy. Anyway, they lived right down the block and came that evening to retrieve “Bootsy.” They walked in to find BOOTSY in Katie’s arms and purring like a machine and they were shocked. “He never lets ANYONE hold him.”

Katie’s tear-filled eyes convinced them to let us keep him (WE WIN) and Clyde lived with us for several years before he found a new porch to sleep on.

By that point, Hunter and Tyler were gone and I’d gotten CALEB, my heart dog. And “home with dog” was clearly not what Clyde had had in mind when he joined our family, so. He moved on.

But before he left for good, and right after I had to put down Stephanie at 18 (Jeremy had already passed a year or so earlier), he brought little Miss Jane to us.

Katie had a couple cats: sweet Phoebe and then mean Sebastian. Both of whom we lost to cars on the road. And that’s when I decided no more outdoor cats. I got her Madison the Puffy Boy for her 11th birthday and he was with us for a long time.

Katie left Madison with me when she left for college. So for a long time it was just me, Caleb, Madison, and Jane.

But one by one…they “aged out” and now…it’s just me.

There were a couple “loaner” animals in there, too. Evil Albert, the mean baby squirrel that got into my mother’s house through a toilet pipe…and then the following year, his alter ego, The SWEET Baby Squirrel, whose name I can’t remember. But he stayed with me for a day or two til he seemed strong enough to manage on his own. He WANTED me to keep him but my mother was coming back from California and…it was just not going to work out.

There was the Brentwood apartment landlord’s cat, Figo, who would slip in the open windows and I’d find him on my pillow or in the kitchen sink.

The upstair’s neighbor’s cat in Brooklyn who’d visit regularly by also sneaking through an open window.

I took two of my friend’s cats for about a year when she was struggling to find a place to live with seven cats. Their names were…March and April…or April and May…but I could never remember which was which so I called them Ken and Amy.

There was a horse I cared for at Boces during my senior year that no one else liked or rode. She was sort of an asshole but I loved her and worked all year on getting her quiet.

So I’ve had a LOT of animals. HAD, borrowed, stolen, ha ha. I used to walk around my neighborhood when I was young, asking people if I could train their dogs.

But my FAVORITES and yes, I’m allowed to have favorites, were CALEB, Princess, Jeremy Andrew, Robbie Stop, and Kimberly Lynne.

If you’ve been here for a while you know about Caleb – he was my HEART, my constant companion, my security, my motivation to get outside and move. He was always a gentleman, from Day One…and always seemed to know what I wanted him to do even before I’d ask. He was so clever and sweet and gentle.

I thought he’d be my last dog. He’s been gone for almost four years now. But lately, I’ve been thinking…maybe I’m almost ready for another dog. Not another Caleb, there’ll never be anyone else like him. But maybe there’s SOMEONE out there for me.

I’ve been thinking about it. For the not too far off future.

But for now, I just have the memories of all my wonderful pet friends of the past 52 years. I’ve been blessed with Good Animals…who all got along nicely with one another.

I’m sorry this was so long. It could have been MUCH longer, ha…but I had a smidgeon of self-control 🙂

Make sure to check out the other ladies’ furry friends.

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After
Em at Dust and Doghair