Oh my. My zoo.
So, I have quite a few critters that share my home with me. First up, we’ll go from the rather mundane to the exotic.
The Cats
Arias
Arias is our oldest cat. He’s roughly the same age as my youngest daughter. We got him when he was a wee kitten. He’s the biggest cat we have and the most of a pushover. He likes to stick close to the house, and the children, acts more like a dog than a cat, until he wants up on your lap.
Ruby
Ruby we also got when she was a kitten. I forget from where, but she is a tabby. She is probably the fiercest cat we have, but again one of the most lovable. She likes to stay in all winter and the moment spring and summer hits she’s out the door and rarely comes home.
Captain Hook
Hook is the asshole. Really. He is. He doesn’t take well to the other cats, and has a bit of a hissing personality. He likes to sleep on the hermit crabs tank, and I am just waiting for his tail to get caught. When we first got Hook, I didn’t let him out of the house. One day he got out, and sure enough ran away. I watched our local pet feed on facebook, and 8 days later someone posted him up for adoption, so I drove down there and readopted him.
Amber Sparkle
Amber Sparkle is Kira’s cat, and she is our most petite cat. When we got her I was not impressed with the house she lived in, they literally pulled her out by her tail to give her to us, and so it took a while for her to trust us, she likes to wake me up at 3 in the morning looking for food, because clearly all of my cats starve.
The Twins, Asher and Aaron or Blue and Green
The Twins came from my next door neighbor. For years we had a cat that would hover outside, and she got pregnant. When she gave birth we waited 8 weeks and took the whole clowder to the vets and got them all fixed. The twins didn’t have a home to go too, and I feared that they would just be set loose so we took them in. They are our first long haired cats in a very long time.
The Reptiles
Princess Ozzy
Princess Ozzy is a fully grown green iguana. She is a herbivore, which means she only eats plants, specifically we give her a lot of turnip, mustard, kale, and chard greens. She also goes nuts for Wheat bread, fruits, pears, and other odds and ends in the vegetable garden. We got her about 4 years ago, from an elderly couple that could no longer take care of her.
Ryuu
Ryuu is a cornsnake. We got Ryuu when he was just a hatchling. The pet store tried to insist that he wouldn’t eat pinkies, and to feed him crickets. He was small, and it took him a while to be coaxed to eat. Today he’s almost 5 feet long!
The others
Toad and Mario – Parakeets
We have a set of parakeets that are blue and yellow. Nothing too exciting about them other than they are cat TV. They are talkative if it’s too loud, otherwise they are content to munch on their millet seed and fly around.
Hermit Crabs x 5
We have 5 hermit crabs that my middle daughter “Had to have”. She even wrote an essay on why she had to have them. Now they are mine and live in a 40 gallon cage that is half aquatic and half sand.
Fish Tank # 1
In fish tank #1 we have a Betta fish, 4 Cory cat fish, and 2 aquatic frogs
In fish tank #2 we have 6 tetras and 1 goldfish
Whew!