My Pets

All my life, I've been an animal autist. I love 'em, with very few exceptions. Here's the ones that live (or have lived) in my house with me.

Raz

Oh Raz. My tiny little man. I love him. Someone had surrendered him to a locally owned pet store, with no information other than he "likes grit" (which cockatiels should not even be given!). I went home, thought about it for a week, and then adopted him, counter to my evil mother's wishes.

Raz came to me with the name "Razzle," which I immediately changed to Raz, the name of the protagonist of my then-favorite video game Psychonauts. A short list of things about Raz: he loves millet; he hates toes; he can say "baby birdy" and possibly "little man"; he's kind of become a mascot for me among my friends, leading to many cockatiel-themed gifts. He does not like other cockatiels, I learned after adopting a second one, D'artagnan; Dart was later adopted out. Currently, he has a massive cage all to himself, and shares the basement with my partner's blue and gold macaw Chiquila.

Bug

About a month after the passing of my dog, I decided my lifestyle would better suit a cat than another canine. Due to owning a parrot, I initially started my search for disabled or declawed cats. While at a shelter about an hour away, viewing a different cat altogether, I ran into the most beautiful cat I had ever seen in my life. I checked the shelter's webpage and couldn't find her, and to this day I think that is the only reason she wasn't already adopted. I left, walked around a feed store for an hour thinking about her, then came back and adopted "Uno."

My penchant for weird names reared its head, and Uno became Bug (short for Professor Bugsnax Chat Meowmers). I later added "Zelda" to her list of names, due to the three orange spots on her forehead that resembled the Triforce and my obsession with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Bug may well be the weirdest animal I have ever owned. She loves belly rubs. She likes to be jiggled and rocked in my lap, and loves huge pets that squish her head. Like many Siamese cats, she talks endlessly, and has something to say about everything. She uses her forepaws like hands and loves to try to put her extremely sharp little claws on my face. She cannot abide my partners' cats and had to be put on Prozac to be calm enough to be around them. She is a little nightmare animal, and I would die for her.

Bandit

Sometimes you play Dungeons & Dragons and get obsessed with your kobold artificer character to the point where you decide you want a Real Life Lizard. Such was Bandit, a leopard gecko acquired at a local reptile show.

There's not much to say about Bandit, in the way of reptiles. He likes to hide under his rocks and bark, and he loves eating worms. Once I watched him walk directly off the edge of an armrest (he was fine). He hasn't got a single thought in his little head and I love him for it.

Jojo

My precious little girl, adopted because I was mad I had to be at work and started looking at Petfinder pages. I was originally looking for a German shepherd, because I have a deathwish, but her eyes absolutely arrested me. I named her Journey, to honor her age and because the track I Was Born For This from the game Journey started playing on our ride home. It got shortened to Jojo almost immediately.

What a dog. Jojo was an elderly adoptee, eleven when I adopted her. She was a mother and came from a hoarding situation, wherein the owner was actively in the process of passing away and could not care for her animals. I was told her coat was completely matted when she was brought in to the shelter (which happened to be the same shelter my best friend got her dog from---a good three hour drive away!). As such, she had been sheared at the shelter, and looked like a puppy!

Jojo was a strange little dog. She wanted, roughly, two things: to sleep under my bed, and to eat her food. Everything else was suspect. She had a problem with peeing on the carpet that was eventually solved by generous application of puppy pads. She did not enjoy the company of other dogs or strange people. My fantasy of taking my dog to the farmer's market was shattered when she began shaking before we even got to the market (I let her stay in the car for the remainder of the market and she was much happier). Toys were uninteresting. Walks were a burden. She really just wanted a retirement home, and I was happy to provide it to her in her final years.

One Saturday in the August of 2024, she had a string of seizures that led to her being euthanized. No one is ever ready to say goodbye to a beloved friend, but I feel I provided her the best care I was able in the last few chapters of her life, and as far as I could tell, she was happy right until the very end. I miss her dearly and think of her often, and look forward to seeing her again at the Rainbow Bridge.

The Metal Glen

Finches...