Some Pet Fun Facts
- Over 60% of American households have a pet of some kind.
- There are 70-80 million dogs & 74-96 million cats in America’s homes.
- Pet food just for dogs and cats reaches $21 billion annually.
- Pet services for grooming/boarding will hit 5.2 billion.
- Americans will spend 15 billion on vet care for pets this year.
Clearly we love pets, not everyone, but lots of us do. I’m quite fond of the furry little critters. Bless their hearts. We had pets when I was growing up; and we had pets while raising our own kids. (the kids grew up and left, and left the pets)
Here are some of the animals that have lived in our home:
- Dogs
- Cats
- Birds
- Hamsters
- Fish
Cats and dogs offer different things to pet owners:
Dogs:
- are typically more friendly and affectionate
- offer the potential of being protectors
- can be trained and taught many behaviors
Cats
- are independent and more self reliant
- don’t each as much
- are excellent mousers
They all shed, more or less. I learned the hard and expensive way, that you need to vacuum underneath the refrigerator to remove the build up of dog/cat hair that blocks the airflow.
The little darlings possess a number of adoring qualities. Until fully trained, they treat your house like it’s a giant litter box, or as if it were the great outdoors. They can provide your home with the most offensive odors, can chew and scratch your furniture to shreds, and can ruin your best shoes in any number of ways. But I love the little darlings.
They have to be fed, watered, medicated, and taken care of. You have to clean up after them. Pet ownership can be expensive, difficult, smelly, dirty, frustrating, and often inconvenient, and did I mention expensive? But they are worth every penny. Bless their hairy little hearts. Sometimes, the pets can be the cause of marital disharmony. Hard to believe I know. How could those sweet little faces ever be the cause of conflict?
I love pets, especially cats; and I’m happy to share my living space with them. The idea of animals roaming through my house doing whatever they want, whenever they want to do it, gives me a warm glow and shiver down my spine.
In Closing
I think I’m going to get a pet squirrel and name him Chester. He’ll live in the trees.
Have a nice day.
Rick Fyffe 
There is a lady in Alvin that hand feeds lots of squirrels from her hand inside her kitchen. She also makes various outfits (cowboy outfit and hat for rodeo season-I do not think there are boots; Easter, etc.). No, I cannot make these things up. I even wrote a story about it for the paper. Even after retirement, I still see the lady at the grocery story and her question, “When are you coming by to see the squirrels?” And my reply, “Right after my shrink appointment.”
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