My Childhood Pets

By now you know a little about me and know I lived in England as a child and young adult.  Lisa wanted me to tell you a little about the animals I loved as a child and teenager.

When I was almost six years old I awoke on Christmas morning to find a fluffy blue grey kitten in a doll's cradle in our living room. She had matter in the corner of one eye and my mother explained she had got soot in her eye coming down the chimney.  That was my first pet I named Toots.  She was quite an intelligent cat and when hungry would go to the shelf where the cat food was stored and knock down a can of cat food. She also liked table food and learned to sit on her hind legs and beg for it.  

One day a stray cat came to our house looking for food.  We adopted this brown tabby  cat which we called Tibbles.  Toots hated Tibbles and would hiss at him if he happened to cross the threshold and enter the house. However he stayed with us for many years.

Later we acquired a pet parakeet called Joey.  This was when  I was 15 and had whooping cough so had to stay home from school  for six weeks. I spent my time teaching him to speak and he learned his name and address and several nursery rhymes including one I personalized, "Jack and Jill went up the hill and so did Joey Wood!".

Needless to say I did not do so well in my final exams at school because I missed the revision lessons.   At this age I also had silk worms and a mouse.  The mouse died of pneumonia after a valiant effort by me to revive him.  His name was "Onty" The silk worms  were accidentally killed by insect spray my mother sprayed in an attempt to get rid of the cat's fleas on the floor.  That's enough for today.  Lisa, I will describe the rest of my pets in another post.