My Silly Animals

I got back into crocheting  just recently.  My great, great, great (really!) Aunt Daisy showed me the fundamentals of the craft when I was young, I mean around eight or nine or so.  My mother and I were already sewing Barbie clothes and I loved to sew, and cook, and Aunt Daisy  showing me how to crochet was exciting, something I enjoyed very much.

Problem is, I've got animals.  Five now to be exact.  It probably doesn't sound like much, especially when you see the photos and see how small they are.  Don't let their size and cuteness fool you.  They are monsters, every single one of them.

The daschund mix that my daughter got from the shelter thinks she's a pitt bull.  (lol.  I typed pitt butt by accident.  lol)  Anyway, she has taken chunks out of our living room furniture for reasons beyond me.  They don't look like dainty little bites as you'd expect from a small mouth dog.  Nope.  The bites taken from the furniture look like a pitt butt (bull) broke into our house when no one was looking and took massive chunks out of the sofa and arm chair my mother loves so much.  Yikes.

Baby, our Chihuahua mix, is a boy.  All boy.  He's sweet, silly, curious, protective, and a lap dog.  Always in my lap dog.  He quietly barks to get my attention when he wants to get under covers with me.  He'll sit up on his haunces all day long to get whatever it is he wants, be it a cookie, a walk, to sit in my lap, to go to the store with me, and so on.  He cocks his head to one side to make the sitting up begging routine even more cute.

Sugar, my mother's dog, is a real character.  She's a malty-poo, according to the shelter, but I think she looks more like a bitchen-freeze (bichon frise) It doesn't really matter what she is except that she is Mom's dog.  Sugar is the most well behaved of all of our brood, humans included.  The only thing she doesn't behave about is barking.  When she sees someone walking a dog - or without a dog even, she barks her head off which gets all the other animals going.  Soon they are all howling the highest pitch song that would make any boy's choir sound as if they were singing baritone.  When the dogs all get together in this high pitched howl, it's enough to make a person crazy and/or drive someone out of the house which it's done to several door knocking solicitors.  ha.  Once they hear all the dogs going like that, the porch intruding door knockers turn on a heel and high tail it off the property.  Ha.

Now for the cats.  Bella is our black and white, slender, very feminine slender kitty.  Tigger is the grey striped, sturdy-borderline-fat kitty.  Both of them we rescued from the shelter when Mom said "Go get another cat, the shelter says it's over flowing", holding the newspaper up in her hands so I'd see the article as proof the shelter really stated that.  Well, my son and I went to the shelter and (my luck) they had a special on cats.  Buy one, get one free.  That's why we have two kittens, teenage cats now, instead of one.   Both cats pretty much sleep all day and suddenly, no matter what time we go to bed, the mischevious kittens decide it's time to play. 

We have a handicapped ramp in the back, for Mom in case we need to take her out in a wheelchair instead of her using the walker.  The ramp was built by someone who really knew what he was doing.  It is very solid, up to code, and very useful.  Even for the cats.  At nighttime the kittens decide to play tag or something and run up and down the ramp.  Well, you know how ramps are built, they are not solid underneath, and the kittens sound like a herd of elephants running about the house in the middle of the night.  Makes for an interesting night, to say the least.  Luckily Mom is very hard of hearing so she gets her rest just fine, not being bothered by the nighttime herd of elephants on the ramp.  Not so for the rest of us.

That's the run down on the animals.  We had more, not so long ago.  Our canary died, sadly.   I think the psycho albino parakeet he caged with is the reason for our canary's death but we aren't sure about that.  We are sure that the psycho albino parakeet killed himself somehow though.  He died not long after our sweet canary died and it wasn't a pretty sight.   We had a Chinese water dragon, too.  Our friend is convinced that the flourescent bulb we were using to illuminate the thing's cage was what killed the thing.  The thing was gross, I thought, but my boyfriend really misses the thing.  I had no idea until my daughter got the thing for my boyfriend that the term "Leapin' Lizzards" was something out of reality, not just something random that fell off someone's tongue one day.  Lizzards DO leap.  And this one swam as well, which made the thing even more gross to me.  We also had another cat.  He was a wanderer and the vet says he may have been poisoned.  Poor Charlie, an asshole as far as cats are concerned, died a horrible death.  The vet tried to save him but Charlie was too far gone.

So.  We're "down to" five pets and all are healthy, lively, playful, and a joy to have in our family.  Here's a few photos of our monsters:

Sasha, the dachshund mix
My daughter calls her "Sophie"
My mother calls her "Princess"
My boyfriend calls her "Ca Ca Dog" cuz she eats snacks out of the kitty litter box EUUUW!
Caca dog likes to pounce on anyone of us.  She's like a bomb dropped out of the sky.  You could just be sitting there minding your own business and suddenly, without warning, CacaDog drops out of nowhere, as if shot out of an airplane directly above, and lands in your lap.  And that's where she wants to stay, no matter what.  She can make herself heavy as an elephant so you won't get up if she wants to sit in your lap.

Tigger, Slayer of all that moves.  Every morning he grabs a piece of dog food out of the dogs dish, throws it across the floor and tears after it, as if it were a mouse, then carries it off to his room where he eats his "prey".

He loves to lick things too.  Licks everything, especially my son.  Any place you can imagine, he'll lick.  And lick.  And lick....  He even licked the tennis balls on Mom's walker.  ??

Bella the neck wrapper.  She loves to wrap herself around anyone's neck and being slender and slinky like a ferret she fits on anyone's neck comfortably, and then purrs like there's no tomorrow.  She'll stay there as long as you allow her to, even while you walk about the house or yard.
She's kind of aloof compared to Tigger who loves to be in the middle of everything one of us tries to do.
This <---- is her favorite place to sleep - on top of the antique trendle sewing machine - mostly on top of the doily I made for Mom.

Sugar, Mom's dog.  She was supposed to be an inexpensive gift for Mom for Christmas one year.  When I finally found her, the perfect match for the dog I was looking for, we found out someone else wanted her too.  So instead of paying the normal pound fees to get her out of "prison", we had to bid against the other person who wanted her.  The bidding went up in five dollar increments, and when it got to over $400, I began to think we weren't going to be able to take this one home.  The lady bidding against finally called it quits - just when we reached the end of our resources, all the money I had plus my friend's twenty something and whatever my boy had on him combined, was the exact time the lady said she could bid no higher and we won the auction!  Had she gone up one bid higher we would have had to bow out for lack of funds!  This one was definitely meant to be Mom's dog!

And finally, Baby, our Chihuahua mix.  His ears are laid back because he's embarrassed about the sweater I tried making him and put on him anyway.  He's kinda growling, I think, because Tigger is dorking with him - just outside the photo.  Tigger was probably making fun of him or something.  Poor Baby. 
He's the protector for me.  Whenever my boyfriend is hiding around the corner thinking he's going to scare me when I walk past him, Baby is the one who'll give him up so I know what's going on.  He'll start a certain bark and point with his nose to where Mike is hiding so he can't scare me.  lol.  Ha ha Mike!