Noiman went missing for 3 months 2 years ago (2003). These months were the worst of my life, I went through them in a kind of haze, imagining all kinds of things happening to her. Happily, she was found safe and sound and returned home. During the search for her, I opened a web site for her, here. It's in hebrew but there is one page in english.

Erez moved in this year with his 6 dogs. Here's a page with all the doggies.

I also had a pet rat, Ronny. I heard on the BARF list that contrary to popular disgust, rats make great pets. I happened to mention this to Osnat and lo and behold, for my 31st birthday, I got a black and white hooded rat. I named him Max. I learned that rats are much happier with a mate, and got him another black and white hooded rat, named Ron (after our mayor, Ron Huldai. Hulda means rat in hebrew). They were both males since I did not wish to have 100 rats by my next birthday. At first they were both very sweet,  I joined a yahoogroup to learn about rats - it's fun knowing people who don't think you're weird when you say you have a pet rat!

Sadly, Max died, on July 28, 2001. He had become aggressive towards Ronny and myself, and had to be castrated. He did not wake up from the anaesthesia.

In the meanwhile, Ronny became a totally free-range rat, coming to his cage only to eat and drink. He lived in the sofa.
This past February Ronny suddenly came out - of the sofa. He wanted to live ON the sofa, not in it. And he lost ALL fear of the cats and of me - he wasn't ever really afraid of us, but now he became our best friend. He was probably just getting old and needed more warmth. Osnat said he was senile <g>. The sofa became all stinky and I put it outside on the porch, and got Ronny some plastic boxes, put some pillows and a fleece blanket inside, and moved him there. However, he did not like it. He sought out his old smelly sofa and started living there, on the porch. The weather was good and there was a roof over the sofa, so he did great.  I wish I had thought of moving him to the porch ages ago - that could have minimized the rat smell my house always had.

Ronny died in April 2003. He was 2.5 years old which is a fine age for a rat. He died peacefully having led a good life (I think). He is buried in my garden.

BARF

My pets are fed BARF. that means Bones and Raw Meat. 
       I was initially on 2 mailing lists - the BARF list, and the RawCats list, from which I have learned a lot about feeding raw. I'm not on them now - too much email! - but feeding raw has become an everyday thing for me. It just makes sense that dogs and cats eat what they were 'built' to eat, not dried up pieces of god knows what. 
       Fenka and Noiman eat whole raw (that means uncooked!) chicken necks, backs and wings (which I ground at the beginning since I didn't feel comfortable with them but now I do). Lately they've been getting turkey necks. They sometimes get offal such as liver, heart, kidneys, brain. Their favourite is green tripe - that means cow stomach. It stinks to high hell but they love it.
They are NOT fed kibble at all. I believe that this nutrition will keep them healthy for years. They certainly seems to enjoy it, although at first didn't understand that it was really food. 
       It took me a while to switch the cats over to BARF. I almost gave up, then started 'tricking' them by mixing more and more of the raw (ground whole chicken, bones organs and all) in with tinned cat food. They now eat the raw food straight, without any tinned food. It took almost a year to get here.
I also tried out the   Feline Future InstinctsTC^tm supplement to mix in with raw beef and organs, since I cannot grind beef bones. However, the kitties declined the meal. Ah well, you can't win them all. 

The pets I keep in my memory: 

Pochi - Born 09 May 1997, died 28 July 2004. I still can't write about how she died.
She was good friends with Stachi. Here are some pics of her - with Stachi, suckling from Stachi, by Trevor's Christmas tree ; in a bag, yawning.
She used to come and welcome me when I parked my car, and come on walks with the dogs. She would jump on the sink in the bathroom whenever I was there and demand to be petted. And I failed to give her a secure home. :(

Nudnick... He was my dog for 15 years. Most surprisingly, my mom agreed to accept him as a gift from a client who worked all day and didn't have time to take care of her darling cocker spaniel puppy. That client had named him 'Flame' but every day when she got home and he'd jump and jump and jump all over her, she'd say 'enough, you nudnick!'. Nudnick... a difficult word to translate into english - basically - someone who keeps doing something annoying, like asking the same question over and over. Anyways, the name stuck, and although it was sometimes embarrassing to have to call out 'Nudnick, Nudnick' in parks and such, we all loved him to pieces, even my mom :).
       When he was about 13, after I'd already left for school, he fell over the side of a stairway down one whole flight of stairs... He couldn't walk for a while, and my mom nursed him back to health, performing all sorts of 'magic' on him. I'm slightly fuzzy about the details, since I was in Slovakia at the time, but after a while, things deteriorated again, till he couldn't walk at all.  He would lie there and look at us, sometimes disgusted with himself if he had to poo where he was lying (If we hadn't been there in time to pick him up and take him to the bathroom). We put him to sleep on July 11, 1995, and buried him in the garden. He was 15 years old.
       Even today, every time I walk into my parents' home, I expect Nudnick to come running up... Seeing other cocker spaniels is eerie, since most of them look just like he did. My mom has resisted taking another pet since, but I have filled my house with dogs and cats. None of which replace the memory of Nudnick.

Nisha - a little grey and white kitten who shared two months of his life with me. A neighbouring kid found him when he was too young to eat on his own. Osnat and I bottle fed him. It took him ages to learn to eat on his own, he only wanted his bottle. He probably knew what was good for him. Nisha suffered from megaesophagus - a pretty rare disorder in which the esophagus (the tube food goes down) becomes dilated and food gets stuck there, and then regurgitated up and out. Nisha wasn't getting enough food to sustain him. At 3 months old he looked like a 6 week old kitten. We tried everything we could but finally had to put him down on July 8, 2001. He is buried in my garden, under the plum tree, right where he liked to sleep. Even though he was here for such a short time, Nisha was very special to me - we bonded strongly through his illness. I miss him a lot, more than I ever expected.

Machka... I got her as a kitten, while still living in the dormitories in Kosice. No pets were allowed there, so we (Osnat and I, we shared a 'complex' there) hid her existence. Later on I moved to my own apartment there, where the landlord agreed to having her. She was the first cat I'd ever really *had* - the cats I took care of during my childhood had to stay downstairs in the garden as my mom wouldn't have them home. And I loved her.
       When she was about a year and a half old, she suddenly disappeared. I was on my way to Prague to meet my mom there, and Osnat had come over to take her to her apartment. She must have slipped out the door when Osnat came in. At first we thought she was just hiding in the apartment, as she'd once already scared us like that. I left to catch my flight and Osnat stayed, looking for her. But she wasn't found... even though Osnat searched for her relentlessly, at all hours (those quiet morning hours, just after sunrise, are best for calling out to a lost animal), and put up ads all over town.
       I don't know what happened to her. I hope she's still alive, although I would have thought she'd come back home if she could. My one consolation is that she was already spayed - a street cat's life is difficult enough without having kittens to take care of.

       Pet owners... *please* spay your animals. There are too many unwanted animals around. Click here to see reasons for spaying. Another good site for information about spaying is at the Dog Hause.

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