My Wacky Pets
by Christine Rollinson
![[Dogs and Christy]](images/Dogs.jpeg)
Welcome to the almost unknown city of Clifton Forge (population 4,000). In the city we have the usual things in the way of stores and whatnot, but life here can be pretty crazy. I'm ten years old and my name's Christy. I'll tell you about this place and what goes on in this city in the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia.
Clifton Forge is named after the nearby Clifton iron ore furnace that operated long ago. The people who built this place named it Williamson, but the railroad called it Clifton Forge.
I told you we're in the mountains, but I haven't told you about what the Air Force and Navy do here. They fly their jet training missions over us. The planes go through the mountains to practice their turns, and use our community for target practice. This may seem unusual to you, but it is typical for us.
One day my fourth grade class went to the park. While we were playing, a fighter jet flew no more than one hundred feet above us, making a huge noise. It scared everybody, even the teachers. Later a huge transport plane was flying so low that my mom actually looked down on it from the top of a hill.
Now for the story of how I came to have four pets.
Two years ago, my dog, Marty, died at the age of thirteen. A little while later we got a new dog. Her name is Magellan. She is about two feet high and is all black. She has a mischievous look and she is! Let me tell you just how mischievous she is.
For a while she ate anything and everything in sight! She ate through the power cord for Mom's computer. Mom got really mad. She enjoys well-balanced meals of dirty underwear, socks, and Kleenexes. One day Magellan tried to get the toothpaste off the sink in the bathroom. On the way down she ended up flushing the toilet. She also got into the wastebasket and spread trash everywhere.
One day Mom tried to chase her out the door, and Mom accidentally stepped on her and broke Magellan's leg! While her leg was still broken she decided to jump from a five foot high platform and hurt her leg even more. She eventually got better and now runs as fast as a cheetah.
Magellan's leg wasn't quite healed when she ran into the garage while I was getting my bike out. She found some rat poison and ate it! We rushed her to the vet, who kept her overnight. When Mom called the next day, the vet said "She's alert and active! She'll be okay. You can come and get her."
Mom didn't want Magellan getting into any more rat poison, so we got two kittens. They were abandoned on a friend's doorstep, and we adopted them. Their names are Lewis and Clark. Lewis is an orange tabby and Clark is a "calico chaos kitty." She has black and gray stripes, white and orange stripes, and orange spots that make her look like she's been through a blender.
![[Yin-Yang Cats]](images/YinYang.jpeg)
![[Up-Down Cats]](images/UpDown.jpeg)
They have taken care of the mice and now they are working on the birds. (Oops!) They don't use their manners when eating because they play with their food and they don't clean up the leftovers. Once we saw them playing volley-mouse. They have a habit of killing their birds inside the house. They will drag a bird into the basement then kill it. Once we found blue jay feathers in the kitchen but couldn't find a body. Then we checked the basement, but we still couldn't find a body on the ground. David looked up and saw the bird. It took Mom ten minutes to catch the bird. When we released it outside, the blue jay didn't have tail feathers, and it wobbled when it flew.
At Halloween, Lewis decided to go trick-or-treating with us, but he didn't come home. Two days later, my brother, David, found him by the road--lost. David picked him up and took him home. He apparently got into some poison, because he couldn't lift his head. Since his nose dragged on the ground, he almost drowned trying to get a drink!
Last winter we had a snowstorm that dropped two and a half feet of snow. Lewis went out and was not a happy camper. When he went out he jumped into the snow. The snow was well over his head, so when he jumped he got extremely wet.
Every time we go on vacation our neighbor, Tony, takes care of our cats and feeds them too much. Clark doesn't overeat, but Lewis does. Lewis is now a true "fat cat."
Magellan has come to think she's a cat and tries to get out of the yard like one. Once she jumped from the same place she did when her leg was hurt, so we had to board up the platform. Then she crawled out between the steps, and we had to board them up. Then she dug a hole in my garden and got out through the lattice work in the back, and we had to board that up too. We called her Houdini Dog. When she gets out she visits the other dogs in the neighborhood.
This spring our neighbors had to move, and couldn't take their dog, so we adopted another pet, "Sarge". First thing we did after we gave her a bath was take her to the vet. Mom says, "Sarge is a true Heinz dog (57 varieties)." Mom calls her Sister Bertrille because her ears stick out, like the Flying Nun's habit. When Sarge first came to us she was very scared and sad. Sarge sat under the kitchen table and cried for hours. She wouldn't eat. Sarge only sat there. When we put her in her cage for the night she kept on crying. Mom said when we went to school Sarge sat down and cried some more, but when we came home Mom said, "She was like a new dog."
Magellan went ballistic! She went crazy because her best friend was moving in with her. The cats were not impressed by Sarge, because she got all the attention, and because Magellan ignored them for weeks. Sarge and Magellan play so hard they eat as much as three dogs.
Yesterday the dogs crawled under the deck and got all dirty. Now everything is clean and peaceful. Sort of. With my wacky pets you never know what's going to happen next!
Copyright © 1996 by Christine Rollinson. All rights reserved.
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Susan Wells RollinsonRenovated October 2019.