Marie F Martin

Dogs, a cat, a cow, a salamander and a bat.

Katy Lou, my buddy.

My family is animal nuts. Always, everyone has had an ongoing affair with an animal. I have four children, all with two or three dogs and ten grandchildren, all with two or three dogs. Lots of dogs when we get together.

My daughter and her husband bought a place they figured would be big enough to have a milk cow. Deanna fell madly in love with her milker. That is, until cold winter hit and milking had to be done in the dark freezing mornings before work, and until she had so much milk they bought pigs to feed the milk to. This lasted a couple of years, then the cow was sold to a lady with seven children and the pigs became bacon.

The cat I loved was named Sam. Black and shiny as midnight. He would lay on the back of my hubby Lazy Boy and swat the newspaper page every time my Hubby turned the page. Loved that cat.

The salamander I remember was one my little kids carted home from the pond a couple blocks away. We made a home for it in a big old fish bowl. Grass, weeds and small twigs made good hidey places for the slimy tiny thing. One day it disappeared from the bowl. Don’t know how it got out, but I picked up wet towels and soiled kid clothes very carefully for a few days.

When my youngest son moved into his first apartment out in the country, he worked night shift at a local sawmill. The first night he came home in the dark, fumbled around to unlock the door and a bat swooshed inside with him. Yikes! He spent his sleep time trying to catch a bat. I thought this was an excellent way to start life on your own.

Then there was the phone call from a lonesome granddaughter away at college and needing a pet. She got a white rat to come home to. Friends started giving her their rats they no longer wanted, which prompted  a call to ask if she was becoming the Weird Rodent Lady.  The list could go on forever, but you get the drift.