Dogs and cats

When I was three years old I had my first pet. It was an orange cat named DeeDee. Anyway, that's what I called the cat, but it's real name was Schoendiest, named for Red Schoendiest a baseball player on the St. Louis Cardinals. My brother, who was nine at the time, named the cat. It was a nice cat. An outdoor, stray cat. It stayed with our family until I was 9 and we never saw it again. We thought that he probably left us to go off and die.

After that we got a dog from the animal shelter in my town. He was a little dog and he had the wanderlust. I was always chasing after the dog trying to get him to come home. During these times we got a few stray cats. One was called Toby. He loved to curl up in our sink in the house. Later he "left" the house and we never found him. My last cat was Reggie (named after Reggie Jackson). Some of these cats got along with the dog and those that didn't, well, I still feel the sting of their claws on my fingers.

When I was growing up we had goldfish and chickens. Chickens that grew up to be roosters. In my fourth grade class we had a teacher who loved science. So we watched eggs hatched in an incubator. I won a chance to get a chicken, but my parents didn't want me to have one. But I guess I wore them down and had two chicks, Tiny and Joe. Tiny and Joe soon got too big and scared my mom half to death. We gave the chickens to a farmer and they didn't live too long, other chickens killed them. :(

Finally when I got out on my own I had a Lab. She was wonderful. She was with me when I got married and when the kids were young. She died about 8 years ago.

Since then we adopted three dogs, none of them could measure up to the Lab. Then we got the Collie and she's the best dog since the Lab.

Now, my children want a cat. If I got a cat it would be an indoor cat. I think this way the cat would live longer. As long as the cat would get along with the Collie, and would be litter boxed trained then I "think" I could go for a cat.

My nephew has cats and say they are low maintenance. My husband is a dog person but it would be nice to have another pet. How can I convince him this would be nice? Are cats nice to have? What would we do when we go out of town? Would we take "kitty" with us? Or lock "kitty" up in the cat carrier. or would "kitty" be purrfectly fine in the house, or locked in a room with the kitty box? I have so many questions.

Kids and pets...as my kid's and dog age, are we ready to take on another animal?? We will have to go to the animal shelter and start playing with the adoptive kitty, then we will see if we have sad faces if we leave without kitty. Stay tuned...