Pets

  The first pet our family had was when I was fairly young. It was mostly my pet-a lop-eared rabbit I named Chet. We kept him in a rabbit hutch outside.

  Our next pet was Timothy, an orange tabby. He stayed in the house the first year or two we had him, then he moved to the outdoors, finding shelter in our storage tent. He was so tame he let me push him in my doll stroller. Unfortunately, he was too independent, and took off when Daddy tried to transport him from one of our houses to the next.
  We had an Australian Shepherd  named Dusky, a really loud dog who loved to jump up on people and was trained to shake hands.
  Also, during the time we had Timothy and Dusky, we got a kitten we named Josephine; we should have named him Joseph, it turns out.😏The two of them tolerated each other, but had tussles every once in a while. Josephine wasn't the smartest cat in the world, so when she disappeared one day, we weren't all that surprised. Here are the two of them-Josephine is the one in the rabbit hutch. (Don't worry, we had sold Chet, so he wasn't in there too.)

   After those two cats were gone, we were given a gray cat we named Martha, and another orange cat we named George. George was a pig, stuffing himself with whatever food he could find, whether it was meant for him or not!😊 Martha had four kittens, which we named Albert, Buddy, Polly, and Ginger Ale. (My brother named Ginger Ale, but he HAD wanted to name it King Darius, for some reason.) Martha hid her kittens just before we moved, so we didn't bring any of our cats with us. There were plenty of warm barns for them to find refuge in.
  Since we were Amish at the time, we had a horse named Abby. She was 16 years old when we bought her, retired from the racetrack. She knew how to go at a fast clip down the road! She had a habit of tossing her head from side to side, which is why she came with the name Flipper.
  After we moved, we got a free orange tabby at the local animal shelter. We named him Shuffles, since he would shuffle around at first, before he got used to us. We had him for about 8 years before he disappeared one day and never came back. He was probably around 9 or 10 years old, so perhaps he died of old age. Whenever there was an available lap, he'd jump right in, settle down, and go to sleep. And if a lap wasn't available, he'd jump on your back!

  Our current two pets are Leonard (a Lionhead rabbit, that we bought while we had Shuffles) and Hope, a black and white cat that's over a year old. Leonard has a mind of his own, and doesn't always like to be held or brushed.

  Hope is very friendly, and loves to be held and petted. She catches rodents, the occasional bird, and even eats earthworms and slugs! Here she's having fun with a mouse:

  She also enjoys the outdoors, unless it's too cold or wet, and climbs a lot of trees, as you can see:

  So that's an overview of our pet experiences! I wish I had pictures of all of them, but we either didn't bother taking pictures, or were Amish, and couldn't take pictures.