My family and other animals.

My family are really into animals, I've noticed.

Half of my family come from a tiny village (in fact, they are the village) about an hour away from here. The family from around that area that I see regularly are my uncle, my aunt, my three cousins, my grandma and my granddad (RIP - I guess I don't see him as much anymore).

My granddad and grandma have this huge farm with all old buildings and huge machinery and barns and orchard and fields and shit and my granddad used to keep cattle - bulls in particular. These bulls were FIERCE. I cannot count the amount of times I'd go into the cowshed as a kid, get too close to a bull and end up being head-butted, flying through air and landing square on my butt, up to my neck in cow crap.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my childhood in a nutshell.

When my granddad died (he had a heart attack in the cowshed) we sold the cows and bought some magic beans my grandma started keeping horses.

My uncle splits his time equally between working with cows (or just 'beef' as he calls it) and turning carrots funny colours for the hell of it.

My aunt has 4 Rottweilers (Kaiser II, Xina, Rocky II, Amber) and a Jack Russell called Gin. The Jack Russell owns those Rottweilers. I don't get it either.

One of my cousins has a horse and a cat, and two of them have a cat each.

And they all live together in a biiiiiig farm house.

As for us weird city folk (you should see the size of York, it's a tiny little footnote compared to New York), we are more for the... ahh... domesticated animals.

My mum had five cats and three dogs before I was born. My grandma has gone through so many cats and dogs in her time I cannot begin to count (though her latest cat seems to be a bit of a survivalist - meaning that I'm actually scared to go to sleep in case he claws my throat). My sister has had a plethora of hamsters (though she neglected them so that when the third one died, she didn't realise until the smell became too bad) and my dad used to have a gorgeous dog called Jet. My other granddad and grandma raise dogs and train them for the army and my aunt has a doctorate in animal rights.

Why am I boring you with this, you ask?

Well, because there's been another addition to the family...

You all recall Gunner, right?

You DON'T?!

Oh my days, people.

Fine, this is Gunner.



He was a gorgeous puppy and we all love him to pieces, but he kept eating my nephew so my brother passed him on to a friend and now he lives a life of luxury with velvet pillows and stuff.

And then there's Zebbie. The full post about Zebbie is here. Zebbie Zebedee Zebra had been around all my life and we were roughly the same age. He died a few months back and the whole family was absolutely gutted, because he was such a character and it's so hard not having that grouchy, furry guy around to make you feel all nostalgic.

Zebbie's a total babe (love you, pup):



And then there's Buff - though her full name is Elizabeth. She's a whippy little Jack Russell-Terrier who always looks scruffy and is impossible to exhaust (except when my sister's around).



She looks kinda crazy in most pictures.

But today someone else joined the ranks.

Meet- and I feel a combination of pity and awe as I say this... "Arthur Boscastle"



He's so cute!!! And totally huggable.

Of course, Buff likes to think she owns the house and poor little AB because for once she is actually bigger than something (Zebbie used to dwarf her, drag her around by her head and so on) but she doesn't realise that AB is going to grow...

And grow...

And then, more growing!

AB's gonna make Zebbie look small, and then Buff's for it.