Farm Animals and House Pets

Until I was twelve years old we lived in a townhome complex with lots of regulations about pet ownership. So nobody there had a puppy or grown dog or a kitten, etc. I felt very deprived about that and it was a stark contrast to the rest of my wonderful childhood. But I made up for it just as soon as I left my parents’ home and was on my own with my husband, pretending to be grownups. Just as soon as we signed the paperwork to rent our first apartment with an enclosed balcony, I went to the Farmer’s Market, the big marketplace in Los Angeles, and visited their pet shop with a purpose. There I purchased a seal point female, Samantha, who ended up living 21 glorious years with me. But she was lonely and I knew I just had to get her a mate. So again I bought another Siamese, but this male was a seal point, almost white with chocolate colored markings. I called him Lurch. He did a lot of that but I think I copied it from a hand that appeared on tv in the Adams Family, or something like that. He lived with us until he was eight but disappeared one day despite my putting flyers out and knocking on doors all over the neighborhood of our first home in Woodland Hills. I still remember him vividly. 

In time we acquired several dogs and many more cats. People just brought me strays or orphans needing mothering. Some I found myself and took to the vet and they ran away the next day. Although my marriage didn’t last, my animal population seemed to always have a new addition and years passed before I met John. Years later when we moved to New Zealand we left our last remaining cat and our dog with the wonderful couple that bought our house in Agoura. It was a wrench leaving them but we knew they were in good hands.

Then the giant leap from one continent to a tiny island in the South Pacific into an unknown lifestyle, was my main focus until we moved into the house that was moved onto our apple and apricot orchard, Apricottage. I found a dog, a Beardie, at an A and P show in our local town. I think that stands for agricultural and pastoral. I should say that she found us. There was a group of puppies mulling around a mother canine. But only one came up to me through the fence as if she knew me. Chloe instantly made a connection with me. Around the same time I found Gypsy, a grey and black and white tabby and then I found her Casper, a longhaired white male cat. They made several litters together and I brought them all to Glenmore House, minus the kittens I'd given away, when we moved there.  Casper immediately ran away but to put it mildly, we had plenty of other cats.  There was a hen house at the property and John fixed it up by making the mechanism for the door a guillotine style to open and close it.  He also built a plank so the feathered residents could get into or out of the house easily, since it was well above the ground. We bought ten chickens, one rooster and nine hens. Unfortunately a ferret finished them off and we found them all dead lying strewn around their yard one awful morning. Somehow the beast managed to get in despite the chicken wire enclosure. Moving onto our Wineshed property we again had acreage for our animals and we went a little crazy. We had Chloe and several cats and got Barry the sheep as our first larger farm animal there. We already had resident geese and wild pukekos, swamp birds that ate the goose eggs, and got several chickens including a trio of Araucana, a cockerel and two hens, that laid light blue eggs. John was building nesting boxes here and there but often they just laid them somewhere on the free range. We also had a variety of chooks of different breeds, mostly Brown Shavers but also some Black Orpington and in time they all mixed together. Most of our hens are bantam sized or a little larger and so the eggs can be large but are usually medium sized. Then we got some black and white blotchy Muscovy ducks to join in the cacophony in the morning at feeding time around the large pond. We added Marcel, our gorgeous peacock and I immediately found Barbara for him at a local farm that had many peahens. They were quite prolific and had offspring for at least a few years. She would find a hidden place to lay the eggs and in early springtime I’d notice her parading around with a line of tweedy chicks behind her. We also wanted a Kune Kune pig and got one when she was just a piglet from another local neighbor. I think she was completely blind but she managed quite well on the enormous scraps of food coming out of the restaurant, although we had to get someone to hoist her out of an irrigation canal she’d gotten herself into. Piggles attained a gargantuan girth once she was fully mature, but she still lumbered from place to place when it suited. We also acquired some angora goats that lived in a paddock behind our house. They were playful and prolific and loved to climb and would chomp down on whatever I was wearing if I wasn’t careful. The last member of our menagerie was our beautiful golden cow that lived at our place behind the restaurant but was owned by the big brute of a guy that made our rustic furnishings for the restaurant. I was in heaven, farm heaven on that estate but we had to move on and most of those animals didn’t accompany us on our relocation. 

So yesterday I took some of my many figurines and lined up a few on the dining table. And per my usual zany compulsions I took a few shots of some of my real animals that still live with us at our House of Cluck-Cluck. Enjoy.