Pets

Dad brought home our first pet while we were living out in the country in North Carolina. It was a gray puppy with black spots. I remember him bringing it in in his arms, waking my sisters still in their cribs. We named him Bozo.
Since we lived in the country there was no chain or fencing in of Bozo. He was allowed to run around as he chose. Our duplex neighbors or the owners had a couple of chickens that Bozo loved to harass. Needless to say Bozo was untrained and wild.
When we moved on to Fort Bragg Bozo did not come. I asked dad where Bozo was and he responded that Bozo ran away. I'm pretty sure that he put the dog down, possibly at the behest of my mother who had been attacked by a German Shepard as a child. Bozo could not be allowed to run around unfettered on the base.

The next pet did not come into our lives until we where living in Fort Wayne inside Detroit, Michigan. One of the soldiers under my father got married and asked us to take care of his wife's dog while they were on their honeymoon. When they got back the place they found to live did not allow dogs so Baby became our pet. Baby was a silver Pekineses, supposedly a champion. His full name was much longer, I only heard it once and decided with the rest of the family that his name was Baby. He was well trained and preferred to sleep on newspapers. Living on a base we he had to be on a leash whenever outside of the house. We walked him regularly. My mother loved Baby.
Baby went with us when we moved to Virginia. The house we found in in Fairfax had a large fenced in back yard. Baby loved it and quickly wore a path along the entire fence. The summer after we moved in Baby was chasing a squirrel and got trapped in a gap between to fence posts, with no fencing. Shortly after he started having seizures. The local vet was not able to diagnose what was wrong with Baby. The seizures seemed to go away after awhile. They returned about six months later and we wound up putting him down. I later realized that Baby had developed epilepsy and was having Gran Mal seizures after seeing an Air Force buddy go into a seizure.
Baby was the start of a parade of animals through our family, courtesy of Jean and Bill. Once out on her own Jean always had at least one animal, usually a dog and two or more cats. Our next pet was Snicklefritz a white cat who had stolen her tail from a brown piebald. I do not remember how she came into the house. She came in while Baby was still with us. The two got along famously. One of their games was that Snicklefritz would crouch on the couch and Baby would casually walk by the front. When he got to the cat she would jump off in front of him. He would pull his head back and she would wrap here front legs around his neck and the two would dance around the living room.
Not long after Baby was gone Jean came home with the cream colored ball of fur. Avery young puppy. Jean knew if she could get mom to hold it we could keep it. After close to half an hour of begging mom took the puppy and let it into our family. Sandy McTavish the escape artist was now a member of our family. School was about a week from being out so Sandy would be alone for a large part of the day (Mom was working at a bank now and Dad was still in Thailand.) We pulled a foot locker cover to block Sandy in the kitchen (he was not house broken yet).  When we got home after school Sandy was gone; we found him upstairs sleeping in Jean's bed. I put him back in the kitchen wanting to know how he got out. He promptly crawled over the foot locker cover which was wider than he could stretch. While he was with us they caught him climbing the chain link fence, he figured out how to open the gate, and he also figure out that when we let him in from the back yard he could run through the house hit the front screen door, pop it open and leave. Sandy had the run of the neighborhood and we  pretty much gave up trying to keep him in. I saw him several times running around with several other dogs, he the leader. Sandy was about 35-40 pounds, not a big dog. His father was Kelly, an Airedale, a large neighborhood dog that kept paper boys company on their morning deliveries. He stepped over fences. Sandy's mother was always in her yard and about half the size of Sandy. Sandy frequently showed up at Jean's school, parked himself outside the windows to here class room and howled until the teacher had Jean take him home.
Snicklefritz was still around when Sandy came. That Christmas the two teamed up. Snicklefritz would climb the Christmas tree and knock the glass ornaments off for Sandy. Sandy would chew on the ornaments until they popped. Once they popped he was done and never cut his mouth. So at various times during the day and night we would start hearing "Pop, tinkle, tinkle" repeated for five or six times.
Then one day shortly before I went off to college Snicklefritz disappeared. On the last day we were at the house I was taking one last tour of the yard before we drove off. Snicklefritz came up to me under the weeping willow. She was is good shape and had a collar on. She got an ear scratch and then left.
When I came home from college for we had another cat, a Persian Angora named Tippity Witchet. These last three are Jean's names.
Sandy was deliberately run over by an angry drunk neighbor in front of Jean. My father very nearly got into a fight with him. He buried Sandy in the back yard.
I'm not sure what happened to Tippity. She did not go north with us when we left.

After we moved back to Massachusetts  and got settled in Jean wanted another dog and I think my mother did also. We went out looking for the new breed called a cockapoo, a cross between a Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle. What we got was Banshee, black and definitely with no Cocker or Poodle blood. We were living in a town house with no fence, so Banshee was chained a lot. He was the dumb enough that he did not learn to leave skunks alone after the first noxious encounter. He loved gobbling down sticks of butter that we left out.
Not long after getting Banshee Bill came home with a six toed cat. He was working at a fast food place. The managed had left, but when he got in his car this kitten had jumped him. He grabbed the kitten and tossed her to Bill and said "Get ride of this". Bill who is also an animal lover brought the cat home. I have no clue what we named her. She was a feral kitten and I remember her taking over a settee in the living room and keeping Banshee at bay.  She was white with two black spots on the top of her head, they looked like grease spots. The two later got along by ignoring each other. We did have her spayed after she entered heat a second within two months. Just as well as she got out often and would leave dead mice and baby rabbits on the door step for us.
I went in the Air Force while these last two animals were around. Bill entered the Army before I got home from training. Both the animals were put down when Mom and girls moved to Stoneham. Those where the last pets my mother had.

Bill later owned dogs.

Not sure about Maggie.

Catherine and I have owned two dogs and three cats all after Liz was born.