My family has had a lot of pets over the years. When I was a very little girl, we had a three-legged terrier called Tripod. I really don't remember much of him, since he (unfortunately) had to be put down when I was about 2 (apparently he was very old, and his health had taken a turn for the worse). Then we got a little grey kitten when I was about 3 or 4. A couple of months later, we went away on holidays for a couple of days, leaving the kitten with some friends. When we got back, we learned that the nasty neighbour next to them had left poisoned meat out for the kitten (apparently he took the 'cat-hater' to a new extreme). We had called the kitten Meme after what we called mom's mother. For days after my sister and I were frantic, thinking it was some sort of bad omen.
Then when I was about 5, we got our first budgie. We called it Timmy. And he flew away. A week later, I got my next budgie whom I called, Tammy. It was an accident. I did not see it. I swear. I was sitting down to dinner, and.... Anyway, a week later, we received another budgie. We called this one Tiny. The first day home, and Dad was showing the guy who gave us the (all three) birds our new ceiling fans. Tiny had escaped and had flown up and was perched on the ceiling fan. Then Dad turned it on.
No, Tiny did not die. But she was never quite right in the head after. For instance, a few years later, when my sister was in second grade, she was chosen that week to bring home the class pet, a male budgie called Luke. Tiny (who was quite large by then, seeing as how she never got out of that cage again), quite literally 'hen-pecked' the poor thing. It happened every time he came around. Two years later, she started to lay eggs (I still have her last egg, cleaned and hollowed out and nestled on some tissue paper in a matchbox somewhere in my box of interesting things). But eventually, she too passed on. But only when she had lived to the ripe old age of seven.
Sometime before, when I was about 6 or 7, we received our second cat. He was black, and we called him Tidbit. Mainly because we found him on our front doorstep, shivering because of the thunderstorm. We fed him some tidbits from dinner and he stayed with us. He was, and still is, the only cat I have ever truly loved. He would sit on top of our box freezer and watch us eat dinner. When we moved to St George (about 7 hours drive sou-southwest of Brisbane) (I was in 10[sup]th[/sup] grade), he came with us. He never liked thunderstorms. About a year later, there was a massive storm, they said it was near cyclone force. We never found Tidbit, and I still don't believe he's dead.
About a year after we got Tidbit, my sister found her first cat, whom she called Ginger. He had been the kitten given to the kids next door for Christmas, but they had been abusing the poor little thing, and he had somehow escaped and came into our house. We had been watching Saturday morning cartoons and suddenly we were aware of the carpet was staring at us. Ginger went with us when we moved as well. He died about a year ago, from extreme old age (he could no-longer even eat). My sister then got her current cat, whom we called Mr Higgins. Mainly because he's grey and has a white 'cravat', white 'spats' and white 'gloves'.
About a year after we lost Tidbit, we received two more pets, one of whom is my dog, Poup (pronounced 'poop'). He loves to sleep at the foot of my bed. His mother was a prize-winning, $5,000 bischon-frieze. His father was the terrier/chihwawa next door.
We also got Dad's cat, whom we called Meik (pronounced 'meek'). He too was black, since the church ladies knew just how badly Tidbit's disappearance had affected Dad, so they gave him a new black cat for Christmas (although a Reverend having a black cat was a bit.... ;D). A few weeks before we moved back to Brisbane, Meik was hit by a car. Since Mum and Dad were in our new house re-painting the walls, the job fell to my sister and I to bury the cat. We did so, beneath the mulberry tree (he had always loved catching the birds who flocked there to eat the berries), along with his last kill, a poor little tawny frogmouth. We thought it poetic irony.
While still in the outback, we also had a bevy of chickens, who were named things like, Little White Took, Little Black Took, Sumo and Golden (our two roosters), the Stilts (so-called because they had veeeery long legs), the Speckled Tooks, the Little Brown Took, Irene (who was our little chick-rooster who was killed by the large black dog next door), and the Twins.
So, in total, we've had two dogs, four cats, three budgies, and a whole gaggle of chickens.