Exhibit J: Our Pets

The weirdest thing about our pets is the alarming number of them.  My parents probably spend more money on animal food than human food.  Mostly because they grow their human food.  Both my parents seem to have an uncontrollable urge to feed and house any living thing that needs it.  Luckily that includes humans.  If you need a roof over your head, they'll find space for you be you Homo Sapien or feline.  You may not care for your three roommates of various species, but you'll be warm and dry.  And dewormed.   
As long as I can recall we've had cats, a dog and a fish tank.  I think this started as an effort to teach the kids responsibility, but it soon became clear who was boss.  Grootie.  She belonged to my grandmother who lived with us.  Grandma K. had two cats, Faust and Grootie, both as black as midnight.  At that same time we also had a dog named Willie (a girl) and we acquired a cat which was named Arafel.  Yeah, I don't know where that name came from either.  I'm just glad they decided to name me after my grandmother.  And a tank full of goldfish.  4 kids + 3 adults + 3 cats + 1 dog + 5 fish.  16.  Easily the fewest number of creatures that have ever lived in my parents home at one time.  This is what I remember about those pets.  Grootie liked you if you pet her, otherwise she wanted nothing to do with you.  Willie had some puppies that she deserted somewhere and we never found (at least not that I know of).  One of the goldfish hopped out of the tank and dried to the wall while we were on a trip.  Arafel was the mother of many of our subsequent cats.  She had one litter under our shed where a skunk lived.  Bad choice.  She lost that fight and we had to wash baby kittens in tomato juice.  More than once I had to bottle feed baby kittens, it is not as cute as it sounds.

Ok, maybe it is.

From her first batch of kittens we all picked a kitten of our own.  Mine was a yellow tabby named Mustard.  The last cat I voluntarily owned.  Nana picked a black one with white paws named Mittens, who would claw your feet through the crack under her bedroom door if you got too close.  Beadle got two gray tabbies, Melanie and Stripes.  And Pooker got the calico, I can't remember its name.  After Willie we had a dog named Katrina.  She was part wolf.  We got the educational hamsters that I was meant to learn about the birds and the bees (and cannibalism) from.  Incidentally, we once left one in an exercise ball overnight, my mom woke up to weird sounds and assumed it was an intruder, she attacked it with a handy fencing foil she had nearby.
I decided I loved parakeets, I went through several.  Including one, a bright yellow bird named Goldenrod (in retrospect that's a bad name for anything, even a flower) that I took the phrase "if you love something let it go..etc"  to heart and freed him.  He never came back.  And it is unlikely he survived the Utah snows.  My favorite parakeet, Marbles, was eaten by an unnamed cat while we were in Payson one summer.  One parakeet got shut in the door, my mom tried to resuscitate him with CPR.  It didn't work.  Around this time Pooker had a turtle.  That Katrina tried to eat.  Unsuccessfully.  Still, he was never himself again after the attack.  The hamsters multiplied, the cats multiplied, the fish multiplied, and I remained blissfully oblivious to their methods. 
When Katrina died, after my dad took her off in the woods to return the earth (he always felt and still does that that is where they feel the most at home, and where they belong when they die (I'm not entirely sure about the legality of this, but he's never let that stop him.))  He has also, more than once, expressed a desire to be handled the same way when his time comes (I AM pretty sure about the legality of that.) We got two dogs, Jessie and Kaio.  I foolishly named Jessie after a girl at school who I really wanted to be friends with.  Somehow naming a dog after her did not have the flattering impact on her that I had imagined.  Weird.
Mika was my dad's first service dog, followed by Songka, who is still pretty new. 
About the time we got Mika we had many cats (probably more than 20) which my parents actively vaccinated and medicated and fed and fixed.  By this time I knew that meant they shouldn't still be multiplying.  We had a rescued iguana who was the meanest lizard I've ever met.  He was also five feet long.  And countless fish. 
Now there are fewer cats.  Like fifteen.  Most of them are half wild and will hiss if you come near.   Many are missing tails or are otherwise too mangy to be loveable.  Two dogs.  And an unnumbered amount of fish.  And six humans. 

This is what happens when your heart is too big to say no.  You end up deworming wild cats when you meet your son-in-law to be for the first time.   Also, some people may begin to suspect that you may be too mangy to be loveable.