I got a cat for my second Christmas. I suppose Santa Claus brought her, but I know now that my maternal grandparents gave her to me. Her name was Daphne. I don't know where she got that name. She slept curled up on my bed with me. I had her for 6 years and then she ran away. I never saw her again. I think she got hurt and crawled off to die somewhere private. I know she's gonna be there waiting for me when my time comes. Same goes for my beloved dog, Mac. He died about two and a half years ago. He was always roly poly - in fact, that was his litter name (my grandmother's dog is the mother. We had babysat the whole litter for a couple weeks...), Roly Poly. We still have his litter mate, Louie. I think I was in 6th or 7th grade when we got the dogs. Their mom is a shih tzu mutt type, and the dad was a lhasa apso, so Mac and Louie were a mixture of the two. Mac looked exactly like one of those Ewoks on Star Wars. Liquid brown eyes. He was such a good dog. Much more laid back than Louie, that's for sure.

He got sick suddenly. We didn't realize he wasn't eating. Our other dog, Kobe, is a bit of a pig (all right, so he's a monster pig.) and was eating Mac's meals. We don't leave the dog food out. We feed the dogs morning and night and they get their own individual bowls. We didn't realize that Mac wasn't eating until somebody went to pick Mac up and felt his bones through his fur. My dad took him to the vet, and there, Mac was diagnosed with diabetes. The vet said it would take a miracle for Mac to survive the night, and that even if he did, we'd have to give him insulin shots every day for the rest of his life. Mac died sometime during the night. It was so sad.

We had other pets. I remember I had a white bunny rabbit once. I got it from my grandparents for my 5th or 6th birthday. It didn't take long for him to run away. Somebody must have left his cage open or something. We had a dog called Bozworth. He jumped up and bit my cousin Bryan on the nose so we had to put him to sleep. We had a black lab named Griffey. We gave him away when we moved to a smaller house with a smaller yard, We'd owned endless cats. Taffy. Tannie. Buddy. Mario, We still have Mario. He's blind in one eye and as weird as they come. Buddy died last October. None of us know how old he really was. And none of us knew how he hung on for as long as he did. He was really, really, really old. And not to mention, miserable. His previous owner(s) must've abused him pretty badly. All he did for the first couple of years he was with us was to hide under the beds (namely mine) and come out only at night to eat and use the litter box. Then he got so he was used to us and started coming out more and more during the day. He was never around the dogs though. And to tell the truth, he kinda freaked me out a little bit. Okay. A lot. I called him the "Casper Cat." He was so much like a ghost, haunting us. And last year, he kept trying to come into my room - I knew what he really wanted to do was to crawl into the hole he made years ago in my box spring and die. No thank you. I wasn't having any of it. And so he died in the laundry room, in his cat bed. I sincerely hope that Buddy's next life is happier - that he is adopted by a nice little girl or boy and is treated kindly and loved.