Out of Pod Experience

This thread seriously needs...

...a kiwi on a threadmill

Be warned, if that video fails to make you smile, I may come back with windswept ducks!

I feel for you MotherMoon, regardless of the pet you become attached to them.
I've kept Rats, Cats, and Fish of various types. Fish are sort of easier to let go of since you don't handle them, but if one of the more characterful ones dies, or gets to the point of needing euthanasia it's not easy, we had 2 cats, one got feline leukaemia, and the other just wandered off one day and never seen again.

Rats are awesome creatures, but they only last a couple of years, and tend to succumb to tumours so that's not a nice ending.


Take a little time, and then consider getting another one, there will be plenty in shelters etc who would appreciate a new home.

i m on my third cat , my first one was 16 years old when he died i sort of grew up with him , and it is true they become family members and you get so attached to them
my second one died a few years ago he managed to get to the age of 18, the kids were devastated when he died iand again i was so attached to him

but i also know they both had a good life , pampered ,fed spoiled and most of all loved that s important

I remember when my dog Gizmo had to be put down. He was simply too aggressive and silly and it was decided that it would be best for everyone if he was put down. At the time I lived in a different country than my father and you can bet your rear that I would have made a bigger scene had I been in the same country at the time. However I found that I kept myself preoccupied with music and learning how to play the guitar (a new hobby of mine at the time) and this helped me a lot.

We had a dog for a while when I was younger, they told me he just disappeared one day. Should have known better.

But it really pissed me off when I found out that my idiot of an aunt was the one they got to shoot old Satan, I felt so violated that she killed him. I hate that woman. (Not just because she shot him; there are other reasons).

First off im sorry for your loss and i wish both you and your wife the best. Its never easy to loose a pet,especially not one you have gotten the chanse to get close to.

I grew up on a farm with cows,y own horses,cats and a dog. Because of this i was raised from a very early age that pets and animals do die,and have gotten more accostumed (hope thats the right word) to it. But even with this it will hurt a lot.
Having lost many pets i know its no point in saying it will get better and you wont feel so bad about it for long. I know thats not the case. I had to put my last dog down nearly 3 years ago due to sickness. A year or so later i moved to US and were currently not in a position to have a dog,but i still sit and plan on how i want a new dog as soon as we can. I want to be able to give another dog a good life,maybe even better life then Tanja had.

But this is the advice i will give you. Neither you or your wife should push your selfes into getting a new pet. But you should not avoid the idea. Basically dont go out and pick the first one you see that looks "cute",wait until you find one that you both feel you have some sort of...connection with.
As others here has mentioned there is one out there that is just looking for a new home,and would appriciate getting a chanse.

So a story and hopefully a bit more cheerful..

Currently my husband and I have two cats,both rescue.
Holly (our oldest) was abondend in a cardbord box together with her siblings and mother behind the wheel of a car in a parking lot infront of a local pet store. The same pet store was at the time working with a shelter and the shelter ended up taking the cats which by then where all sick from the rain and cold. They reckonised the litter since the owner had previusly tried to make them take the cats in but they dident have room,but they did not know her name.
A month or two later my husband and I randomly went into the pet store just to some time and we where standing watching the cats when Holly came out of hiding in her cage and went all the way up to the class. I put a finger on the glass and she raised her paw and "stroke" my finger on the other side of the glass.
Needless to say less then 2 hours later he had gotten convinsed that we where getting a cat and a few days later we went home with a black half siamese green eyed cat which had little to no chanse of getting adopted because of her being skitterish and insecure around humans.
Its been over a year and she has now been in our laps 5 times. But now she dosent run if we make a fast movement. She wil jump up on the couch and go to sleep next to us,she plays fetch (yes she acts like a dog),she talks to us,we attempted to sleep alone but she learned how to open the bedroom door so she has her own chair next to the bed,and she has to be in the same room as we are,and now recently she has to sleep on my feets when im on the computer :)
When we talk about her to others we just point to this commercial which is really how we feel once in a while;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O1SX4x7uUE

Now for Lenore.
She is a terror! And we love her :)
Because of Holly being so skitterish we where adviced to get a second cat so she had someone to socialise with. We had both agreed that we did not want a second black cat but we both wanted a russian blue. So we looked online and found a shelter not to far away (the one where we adopted Holly moved to another state) that had a few russian blues we liked the description of.
When we parked infront of the shelter my husband specified "We are NOT leaving with a cat today".
So we got the tour and it turned out that all the russian blues had been adopted and their site just hadent been updated,so they left us alone for a while and we where just standing looking into a couple of rooms where they had cages and cats roaming freely. I was about ready to leave when my husband pointed towards a cage all the way in the lower corner of one of the rooms that had this really skinny small black kitten in it that was sticking a paw out trying to reach a small toy ball on the floor infront of the cage. He asked someone who worked there if we could go inside,and they said it was ok and then took the kitten out of the cage and let him hold her. The kitten went straiight up to his shoulder and pushed her self in towards the side of his neck and throat and just started to purr,and then he gave her the ball and she was running around after the ball for a few minutes and then straight back to his shoulder.

Still now i keep teasing him about how he was telling me how we wouldent adopt a cat that day,and still now he gets a very sad look in his face and says "I just couldent leave her there,not even for one night".

She has turned out great,even if she is still small. She was a feral cat before the shelter picked her up so she dident have much human contact and im sure it can explain her small size (she is about 1 and a half and is only 7 pounds).
We have had to put childlocks on all our cabinets since she loves opening them,the leather computer chair i bought him for his b day is her favorite scratching post (the 5 others is not good enough),she jumps on the counters,she wakes us up during the night to play and our food is really HER food. But as i said earlier..we love her. And ofc her coming over in the bed every morning and snuggeling up on our chests when our alarms goes off..it makes all the other stuff worth it :)
Basically you can think about her as a kid..she knows that if she does something wrong she gets attention,and she comes with this cute squeek sound that just melts your heart :)

I hope things will work out ok for you both,and i hope the stories made you both smile a bit..

I wish you the best of luck,and never forget the good times you had.

Regards,
NC