Emma's World

     This page is about my and pets. I have 1 dog, 2 cats, and 8 birds. My sister also has a rabbit. One cat is very old, skinny and unsocial. His name is Doozle. Our other cat is still a kitten named Speckles. She is six months old. Six of the birds are my mom's. They are zebra finches and cordon bleus. My dog, Lily, is a cairn terrier. She is about 4 years old. We've tried to breed her twice. Once it didn't work. My sister's bunny is named Liberty.  

<<<This is Lily

  Lily is my family's dog. She is a cairn terrier and we got her when I was in first grade. It was only a little more than a month until my birthday. It was quite a surprise when we got her. Late one Thursday night, after we had gone out to eat, my parents took me and my little sister to a local pet store. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot I had an idea of what was going on.

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  Lily is a cairn terrier (like Toto from The Wizard of Oz. ) And we decided to breed her. So we drove all the way to Virginia to meet with this lady who owned two cairn terriers.  (Lily was the runt of the litter so she was pretty small compaired to her boyfriend.) Lily stayed with the lady and her dogs for one or two days. Then... guess what? She got pregnant! Soon she was waddling around the house and we had to carry her up the stairs and pick her up to put her on her 'spot' on the couch.  One or two months before she was pregnant she stopped playing soccer, which is her all-time favorite sport.

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  Doozle is my family's other cat. He is over 15 years old. My mom had him before she met my dad. She had had some bad luck with persian cats before, but that didn't stop her from rescuing yet another cat from the wrath of her hairdresser's boyfriend.

  One day, my mom's hairdresser asked her if she wanted a cat. My mom, of course, said yes, and the rest, as they say, is history. When my mom went to pick Doozle up, the boyfriend was there. When my mom took the cat, she heard him say, "I'm glad you're getting rid of that thing." Doozle has always been terrified of men, so we have a pretty good idea that his life before he came to live with us was not a happy one. He's still not used to my dad.

Dite is short for Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of love  and beauty. We got Dite in August 2008 from a breeder who lives nearby. Her name is because her mother was Athena and her father was Zeus. Aphrodite is a min pin (miniature pinscher), which is like a doberman pinscher except in mini form. Dite and Speckles liked each other from the very beginning, and Lily is still getting used to her. Dite cannot be contained by any pen, just like Speckles. A few days after we got her, we went out to eat and left her in a little pen in our basement. When we got home, I looked through the window expecting to see Lily, but I saw Lily AND Dite! I said, "Mom, you left the puppy out?" and she replied, "No, why?" pause. "Is she out?". "Yes." I replied. And you know what was amazing? She didn't have one accident in the house. We were gone for a good 3 hours.

My mom  has always loved finches. When she was a kid, she had a whole aviary of more than one-hundred birds! For her birthday in 2001 (I think), we got her a pair of Zebra finches. Those two finches quickly multiplied into five finches. Good thing we had a big cage. This is a difficult thing to think about becuase I think that since the original two Zebras, we've had about ten offspring. One of those five babies died, and we were left with Barbie, Ken, Kelly, and Tommy. Over the years, Barbie and Ken laid many clutches of eggs that we eventually gave away when the babies grew up. This is fuzzy and VERY hard to  remember. When we moved to where we live now, Ken began to beat up Tommy. Then, one day, Ken died. We were sad but also relieved because now he couldn't hurt Tommy. A few months later, Barbie died. We were left with Kelly and Tommy. Once, when we were at a pet store, my mom saw these beautiful blue finches called Cordon Bleus. My mom wanted to get them, but she didn't know if that breed was compatible with the zebras. We had only two finches for about a year, and then I got Cody. Kelly and Tommy did try to lay eggs at first, but since they were siblings, the eggs weren't fertilized properly, and they were duds. Then, a few months ago, we went out of town for a few days and the day after we came back Kelly died. She had starved to death. Tommy went into depression. He never sang. He occasionally chirped but otherwise he was silent. After a little less than a month of his sadness, it was almost my mom's birthday. My dad and I went to Petco and bought a beautiful female Zebra finch. My mom was at the store when we got home so we quickly put the new bird in the cage. Tommy started singing. When my mom got home, she noticed Tommy singing and then saw her new bird. She named her April. Mother's day was coming up (my mom's b-day is April 29th) and so, as a birthday/Mother's day gift, I was online and purchased a pair of Red-Cheeked Cordon Bleu finches from Arkansas. (I did some research and found that they were compatible with the Zebras.) The birds shipped the day before my mom's birthday and arrived on the actual day! They were alive and healthy. We named the male Azule (Spanish for "blue") and the female Skye. A few days after the bleus arrived, April laid eggs. There were five eggs. In the end, three eggs hatched and two of the babies are alive and well today. Their names are Grace and Jonas. They will soon be going to live with the family of a boy in my class.

I have moved Snow and Narcissus' cage out to the 'birdroom' and now when one sits by the window, they hear Tommy's lovely song, Narcissus' singing, Snow's screeching, Azule and Skye's mouse-like chirp, and Jonas' developing song (his voice isn't fully developed yet).  It's like a bird chorus. It's very relaxing.

 Oh, yeah. This morning I saw Tommy gathering nesting material.