On the Pets I have loved and lost

Author’s Note: The following will not be very funny.
If you would rather read something humorous, go here, here, here or here. Or watch this video.
You have been warned.

Last week I told you about my dog. This week I want to talk about some of the other pets I have had.
I’m gonna put them in the order they affected me, least first.


Nibbles – My First Hamster

This is not Nibbles but this is what he looked like.

Like many children, one of the first pets I had that was solely my responsibility was a hamster.
He was a large white Syrian. When I bought him they put him in a little cardboard box which I put inside the cage I had waiting in the car. During the ride home he chewed his way straight out of the box so I named him Nibbles.
Nibbles was a good hamster for the most part. He only ever bit me a couple of times and I’m sure it was my fault. He did, however, live up to his name. The cage I had him in was one of those plastic ones that isn’t really a cage but a transparent box with a wheel coming out of the side. His favourite thing to do was shun his little house and drag all his bedding into the wheel. Once in there he would chew away at the inside of the wheel and the place where the wheel connected to the rest of the cage. He actually managed to escape like this as he chewed so much he disconnected the wheel from the cage. I found him on the opposite side of the room, on top of a wardrobe. He’d obviously chimney climbed up between the wardrobe and the wall and was chilling behind my stereo. He also liked to try and run in the wheel whilst it was still full of bedding which was always pretty funny. He also loved going down stairs in his hamster ball. The first time he did it we thought he would die but by about the 5th time we figured he must enjoy it as it never seemed to bother him.
One day I found him lying on the bottom of his cage. I’ve never really had a problem with death, per se, but I was very sad he’d gone and so I carried him downstairs, dug him a little grave and buried him in the garden under a rose bush.

Lemmy The Rat

A beautiful creature. The rat’s pretty cute, too.

A lot of people have a problem with rats and I really don’t understand it. They’re very intelligent, very clean and very trainable. It seems to be something about the tails? I dunno.
Anyway, I loved my rat. I got her from a friend who had just had a new baby and so needed to get rid of her. She brought her into the bar where we both worked, inside her coat. Lemmy had just been chilling in there on the bus ride over. She was named Lemmy after Lemmiwinks from South Park, the gerbil who had an adventure in Mr. Slave’s ass. Not my doing, though I fully approved.
Lemmy used to sit and chill on my shoulder whilst I wandered around the house and she’d play on the couch whilst I watched TV. Whenever I got up and left the room or anything she’d come to the edge of the couch and wait until I came back. She came when I called her name and had the sweetest temperament.
The problem came when I met my fiancée as she had a certain little Terrier who, being a Jack Russell, really wanted to eat Lemmy. When we moved in together I had to keep Lemmy in a back bedroom full of boxes to keep the dog away. In the end it became too much hassle and it wasn’t fair to Lemmy so I gave her to my Fiancée’s brother. He loved her just as much as me. She even found him a £20 under his bed (she had a thing about money).
Sadly, she started to get ill and the vet diagnosed Meningitis. She died soon after. Even though she wasn’t with me all that long I was very attached to her and her death really affected me.  I would love another rat as they make amazing pets but, due to the little bundle of rodent hunter I have running around the house, I can’t.

Finally, we come to the last entry:

My First Dog – Bonny

She’s actually in the middle of howling at the moon in this picture.

We got Bonny when I was four years old. My sister was away at a summer camp type thing and me and my parents went to the local dog home. There were loads of puppies there, all waiting for someone to take them home. We knew our dog as soon as we saw her.
She was a little black, white and brown mongrel. We picked her out, went and bought her a collar and lead and took her home. We let her into our tiny back yard and watched her through the patio doors as she explored. I wanted to call her Peaches and a host of other stupid names but, in the end, we settled on Bonny.
Me and Bonny grew up together. We played in the field behind our house, we ran in the snow, I kept her company on Bonfire night when the fireworks scared her.
My sister used to walk her in the mornings, on a field near our house. One November she got spooked by a firework and ran away. My sister looked for her but couldn’t find her and ended up taking the day off College to keep looking. That night we were all sat in our front room, wondering if we were ever going to see our dog again, when I heard a noise at the front door. I ran and opened it and there was Bonny. She’d obviously been hiding and then, when she felt safer, had found her way back to us.
That wasn’t the first or only time she ran away. The first time was when she was quite young and my Mum was walking her on the field behind our house (these stories span two houses, hence the two different field locations). A hot air balloon fired it’s hot air jet as it was flying over my Mum and the dog and it freaked the dog right out. She did a runner and it took my Dad ages to find her. We were terrified she’d fallen in the marsh on the field. After that she always howled at the moon.
I loved that dog so much. When I couldn’t sleep she would cuddle up with me on a cushion on the floor of my room. When I was sad she would comfort me. When I came home from school she would go absolutely mental, dragging herself along the floor and then rolling over so I could pet her belly.
As she got older she developed a lump on here leg. We took her to the vet and had it removed but it grew back. Time and again we took her to have it removed and would have kept doing it, but for her suffering.
One day she was in a very agitated state, running up and down and rubbing herself on the carpet. When we stopped her and rolled her over we discovered a huge tumour between her back legs that seemed to have come from nowhere.
We took her to the vet, knowing this was it. One of the staff knew why we were there and took us into a back room where I said Goodbye to one the best friends I ever had. She was only 11 years old.
It was the worst day of my life and I will never forget it.
You can never replace a dog. You can get another and you will love it the same but it is never a replacement. I still miss Bonny. I always will.

And that brings us to the end of this very cheerful post.
I will try and be funny again next week and will also try and post on time.

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