Our cat, Sport, came to us as a stray at the condos we were living in before we bought our house. He was only a couple of years old and his owners had moved out and left him! We could never figure that out, because he was such a great cat. We never had to have a cat box and he almost never scratched on the furniture (except that one sofa-bed that he apparently just hated). He hung around our condo for about a year before we moved into our house. That's when we officially made him ours (tag and shots) and brought him to live in our new house. He had full reign until the dogs came a year later. Didn't matter thought, he ruled the dogs!
He passed away in 1996 of cancer at an age of 13 (we think).
This is Shannon, our first Golden Retriever. It took us one year to prepare our newly-built house for dogs. One year and one day later, we brought Shannon home and started looking for her soon-to-be sister.
Shannon was a dog with an attitude. She was really smart, and as anyone who shares their life with a smart dog knows, she didn't think she needed any stupid human to tell her what to do. If you insisted, she would wrinkle her nose at you and comply. She enjoyed every day as the alpha dog to our second Golden! Shannon loved bubbles, stuffed animals and going to the park.
Shannon passed away from cancer in the fall of 1996 at the age of 10.
Shannon had her own page on the old Prodigy server, which is still active, but uneditable. You can click here to access it.
This beautiful beast is Niki, our second Golden. She came along about four weeks after Shannon, at the tender age of six weeks. Shannon bossed her around immediately and Niki became the most loveable, easy going dog we've ever known. I kid you not, one day I walked into the room and our cat, Sport, was standing there with his claws dug deep into Niki's snout! And Niki was just wagging her tail. Niki would lay by the fireplace, seemingly sound asleep, but when any of us would walk into the room, including Sport, her tail would thump the floor in welcome. She just had a heart of gold. Her nickname was "Pokey Beast."
Niki lived one year beyond Shannon. She died of an unknown illness that we suspected was cancer. She was too old to go through extensive treatment.
Niki also had her page on the old Prodigy server. Click here.
And this is Roscoe. He was the cutest little Tabby male that I got at a pet store for $25. David had gone to St. Thomas for hurricane relief for three weeks it it was a holiday weekend (Labor Day, 1998). So on the way home from work on Friday night, I picked him up.
Roscoe had a bad-boy attitude. If you tried to pet him, he would reach up and bite your arm. If you were brave enough to not pull your arm away, you would find that he wasn't really biting, but playing. Most people weren't brave enough, but the neighborhood kids figured it out. They loved him. But tough as he was, he also loved to snuggle and slept between us in bed.
Roscoe would follow us on our walks with the dogs every night. This would bring people out of their homes to laugh! We were quite a site. If we stopped to visit one of our many dog friends along the way, Roscoe would keep discretely out of site. But he was always there when we stared along our way again.
One summer evening when Roscoe was two, he didn't come home. We put up sixty signs in the neighborhood and talked to everyone who knew him. The neighborhood kids kept their eyes out for him, too. But we never saw him again. We are pretty sure that he tried to use that Roscoe attitude on one of the coyotes that occasionally prowls our neighborhood at night.
