I'd also like to add, be prepared to take on the animal for a LONG time, no matter what. Where are you going to be in 5-10 years? Will you be in college? Will you have moved out on your own? Will you easily be able to find an apartment or some sort of housing that allows animals? You can't get an animal just to please yourself: you're accepting the responsibility to be a MOM to the animal for the rest of it's life. Don't get cheap and dump the animal because you're "moving and the place doesn't allow pets". It's all good and well if the animal can stay with your parents, but how do they feel about it? Do they want to take care of the animal for the last half of it's life, when vet bills may be piling up because of the afirmities of age? Can you afford an animal right now, actually? Can you afford money for food, kitty litter (or rabbit litter), vet visits (they should see a vet at least once a year, more than twice if possible), toys, misc stuff (repairs to the rabbit hut, for example). Do you have money set aside for the emergencies, like if the kitty ate some tinsel or string and it's twisted in her intestines (that's MAJOR surgery to remove it).
Nobody should ever get an animal on a whim. Preferably, they have to think about it for a while, doing research at the same time, and if after a while goes by (at least a month, I say, at it's minimum) and you're still dying for the animal and you KNOW you can take care of it just like your research has said, then by all means, go for it. But make sure you know what you're getting into. For example, I feed my kids top quality food (a RAW meat diet), and for 3 cats and 1 dog, that adds up to $40 a month for the dog (not bad, actually) and $100 a month for the cats ($25 a week). Add in that the dog also needs the veggie patties to go with his meat (it's not completely balanced like the cat food), and that's an extra $10, but it lasts a long time (a quarter of a patty a day, with 8 patties in the box, means the $10 lasts a whole month). And kitty litter, oh boy, the kitty litter. I buy the better stuff, not because I'm a haughty snob, but because I've learned that the better, environment-friendly stuff is actually better than the clay stuff you get at the grocery store (by clay, I mean both clumping and unclumping). The clay stuff, if you've used it your whole life, you probably don't notice anything wrong with it, but once you try a stuff made from wheat or corn, you notice a major difference. When I once went back to clay for a week or so (I think my parents bought it, or I did because I needed litter ASAP and the store I shop at was closed). Well, for the love of God, the house STUNK almost immediately! The whole family noticed it, and I was using what I think is the best of the clay brands (that Purina stuff), which has the least smell and better clumping power. But ugh, all I could smell was dust and clay! Then when I got the normal stuff, I swapped it out and literally in 5 minutes, the room cleared up. Mom commented on it right away and she still raves about how good the better stuff is. But anyhoo, if that's the direction you choose to go, the better stuff is also more costly than the cheaper stuff (instead of the $8 of, say, Purina litter at Superstore, the same amount of, say, Swheat Scoop, is $12-15. Actually, I'm not sure that's right because another thing that's different between the two types is weight. The better stuff tends to be lighter, since it isn't clay, so my estimate is based on the size of the bag. I'm pretty sure the 15-20lb bags can be anywhere from $30-50, but I usually get the smaller, 3-10lb bags, which vary from $7-15. If you're still reading at this point (I don't blame you if you're not, I freely admit, as my weakest point, that I just don't know when to stop writing, lol), I want to note that higher quality stuff, while higher priced, are actually better value. You get to use less (whether it be food or litter) so it actually lasts longer. And with food, it's better balanced, nutritionally, and full of stuff the body can actually USE (none of that filler crud in Pedigree, Whiskas, or Purina). So in the long run, you actually pay less, and you get a better looking animal out of it (animals fed on cruddy foods tend to have lackluster coats, dull eyes, huge stinky poops, low energy, etc.; while animals on higher quality foods tend to have gleaming, silky coats, bright eyes, small scentless poops, and higher energy. Plus, animals with that better health tend to recover from illnesses and injuries faster than dogs eating the corn-based foods that grocery stores are so fond of).
To go back to my first paragraph (saying such a word doesn't even embarrass me anymore, which is kind of frightening), I want to note that my Molly has proved to be a trial for my family. We got her as a 5 month old who was stuck in a tree. We brought her home for the weekend and put up fliers, but NOBODY called us and we fell in love and kept her. But she had a problem, a big problem (which may or may not have accounted for her being abandoned even though she's the most loving, gentle, sweet, accepting kitty I've ever met). When she first arrived, all she'd eat was canned food, which was a problem because my two girls at the time were on a kibble-only diet. But a pure stroke of luck, I had bought 24 cans of canned food (the Merrick brand) the day before we found Molly, so I gave her some and she dug in. She ate those 24 cans in one week (note: that's $27), and then I forced her on kibble because I wasn't yet able to afford a canned diet for her. That's when the trouble started. She ate kibble easily enough, discovering that it was actually yummy (mmmmmm, carbs). What came in one end came out the other end... uh... violently. Betcha know what I mean by that, lol. Her poops were sooooo horrible, that in the following year, she didn't have a single solid poop. At best, they were very very soft formed poops, but more often than not, they were hot and runny, and it wasn't uncommon for us to be in another room and hear splattering noises. And heck, sometimes the splattering would spray on the wall. But the worst part was the smell. It was GOD AWFUL! It brought new meaning to "peeling the paint off the wall" or, my favorite phrase, "melting steel." I tried all sorts of food, moving off the California Natural the girls started off on, to trying Felidae, Solid Gold, Timberwolf Organics, Innova, Innova EVO, etc. Oddly, she seemed to do the best on Timberwolf Organics, which is known to be more dense and rich than other foods (while California Natural is best for kitties and doggies with sensitive tummies). At first, I thought she had an allergy to beef, as any time I gave her something with beef as a primary (or even up-close) ingredient, her poops would reach it's worst, and would usually have spots of blood in it (a good clue that it's an allergy). I tell you, it increased tension in the family, as my parents didn't even want Molly in the first place ("Two cats is enough!") and my sister and I fought to keep her ("Aside from the poops, she's literally the perfect cat! And the poops are a MEDICAL problem that can be fixed if we find the source!"). After a year, I gave up and decided to try a wet diet. I decided to skip the canned and go straight to RAW (since RAW is known to help animals with sensitivity problems, oddly enough), and the price of RAW and canned was comparable. And wouldn't you know it, after the first week (detox week, when the body rids itself of the toxins and buildups from eating kibble, even if it's high quality kibble), the bad poops eased right up! We finally found out that Molly could have a stinkless, well-formed poop! Granted, her poops still aren't the same as Buffy and Willow's (dry and hard little rocks, especially Willow, who could probably eat metal and still have perfect little poops), but as long as it isn't putrid pudding, I'm happy. And she's happy, too. She's warmed up even more and has really blossomed, though that could just be because she LOVES raw meat. Possibly, her first family fed her canned food (may be the reason she wouldn't touch kibble when I found her), but bad quality canned food, and they got fed up with her stinkiness and kicked her out. Other than that small issue (I think she just can't digest the carbs in kibble), she's seriously the perfect cat! She's sooooo gentle, my niece can pinch her and not get slapped. She can pick Molly up in an uncomfortable way (around the "armpits") and Molly won't lash out (she'll race away like a rocket once she gets released though). Molly can get scared by something, but she quickly learns that it's harmless. Like in the beginning days when we had her and she met Jake. You could tell that she wasn't terrified of him like most cats would be (so I think her former home had a dog, and I have a good theory that it was a small yappy dog, due to how Molly once reacted to a yappy dog on the TV once). But she did have reservations. One night, I was holding Molly in my lap while watching TV and Jake, my dog, who WANTED to play with the other two cats and always got attacked for it, was racing around the chair like an excited teenage fool. The first time around, when his wagging tail slapped close to Molly, she spooked, fluffing up and staring intently at him as he passed by, then flipping her head around to stare at him as he returned around the other side of the chair. I continued stroking her, watching TV. The second time by, she spooked, but to a lesser degree. By the third circuit around the chair, she was unfazed, realizing that Jake wasn't doing anything other than just racing in a circle. And it turns out that she LOVES dogs! She and Jake were inseparable for nearly a year, which was when Jake started to get bored (I guess the excitement of finally being able to sniff kitty butts lost it's thrill), but he still loves her and she still gives him headbutts. I made a video a while ago (a wee bit corny, though, lol) of the relationshipo, and if you look closely, you can see how intent he is on her. Every single scene of the two, Molly's doing something (looking outside, playing in the Christmas tree, whatever), and Jake is ALWAYS. STARING. AT HER. It's the herding dog in him, lol, but he's pretty gentle with her, even when he gives her a shove with his head (to get her to move so he can "herd" her) or nips at the air near her (same reason as above, lol). Molly's so good natured that if Jake actually throws her off her feed, she sort of hesitates ("What the HELL was that?!") and then arches back towards him and gives him a headbob on his chin (which drives him nuts because he doesn't know what to do then, so he squeals, runs in a circle, then hides in a corner to stare at her in safety, lol)
[URL="http/youtube.com/watch?v=bo7CRVZlA2A"]http/youtube.com/watch?v=bo7CRVZlA2A[/URL]
For the record, it might seem like I'm ragging on Molly, but the other furkids have their issues too. Willow may possibly have been inbred (don't, I repeat, don't get a free kitten from a newspaper ad posted by a woman who claims her cat got impregnated by a stray) and it may or may not be related to her constant urinary problems, and her totally crazy attitude. If she's not stalking strangers who DARE enter her domain (and she'll slice them up good if they bend to pet her, which they do because she sits there looking so sweet), she's peeing in laundry baskets or on leather couches or on goose-down pillows or blankets. It's actually more common than you think; it seems most problems with cats come from inappropriate peeing. We're working on the source of Willow's peeing, but the last vet visit determined blood in her urine (so it was an infection). Next time, I'm going to ask the vet about Cystitus, as that seems very close to what Willow may have. Also, along with the peeing, she just loooooooves to poop in corners. And my dog, while healtwise is very good, he tends to be accident prone. A few years ago, a procupine moved into a park Jake and I frequent, and Jake met the porcupine face-first twice (oddly, he got the first 5 quills on June 25 in the last evening around 8-9, and then he got the next 20+ quills on July 25 in the late evening around 8-9). The first time, one of my uncles who's a vet pulled out the quills, but the second time, we had to go to an emergency clinic and pay $160 to have the quills taken out while under the influence (well, "put under" is the word I'm thinking of, and he was in quite a stupor when we got him home). A couple of years later (2005, to be exact), he tore his ACL and that was $500 to get repaired. $500 is actually nothing for ACL repair, as we were quoted $3200 if we went to a hospital in Calgary (my uncle's clinic) or $1200 if we had it done here in our city. In the end, my uncle loaned out a room at the hospital where he used to work at here in this city so it only costed $500. But there's the checkups and painkillers during the recovery, not the mention the mental anguish (boy, I tell you, after a week straight of being woken up at 4am by an upset, barking, crated, ouchie dog, I was ready to lose my mind)
If you skipped past this storybook, I don't blame you. It's been a while since I wrote anything about my beloved furkids, so it kind of just exploded out of me and I couldn't stop. It was nice to "talk" about them in just depth, though, lol
I just had a thought. We got Jake when I was 11 (he was more of a "whim," though my parents made me do the proper research before we got him), but did I at all think about my future with him? Did I ever stop to think about where either of us would be when I was 26 and he was 15? Nope, not at all. I was a child and was just excited to have a dog. Fortunately, my life is devoted to him and my other three girls, and I already know that when I move out into my own place, all four are coming with me. If that means waiting a little longer to find a pet friendly apartment, and paying a little more in pet deposits, then so be it. I can't remember what life was like without them, and it's my responsibility to take care of them for the rest of their lives. Cats can live up to 20 years of age EASILY, so when each of the girls are 20, I'll be 34 with Willow, 36 with Buffy, and 38 with Molly. I only got these girls when I was 14, 16, and 18!