First Pets of the Bryant Family – Adventure of the Week

Last Updated on June 8, 2018 by Terry

Ms. Carla and I probably have our last pets, due to our age and theirs. We’re sixty and our two rescue kittens are one and less than one. Well, I’m a little older than sixty.

But this is about our first pet. Be sure to check him out in the pics below! I looked through every photo album we have and found two pictures of him. Nice shiny coat of soft fur. He was kind of silver and white. Really pretty. We wondered why he did not have a home. I have no idea why someone would not want him. I was glad to have him. Carla was a little cautious at first, but I think she finally warmed up to him. He wasn’t exactly what she had in mind for our first pet, but first is first, right?

She insisted on picking out the second pet. Turns out it was a small kitten we found wandering along the road. We rescued her before the term was popular. We really loved Black-n-Whitey the kitten. You will find a picture of her also at the end of the story.

We got married in September of 1979. We moved into a small mobile home on the bank of McHenry Creek. Actually it was too small to be a mobile home; it was merely a trailer house, 12’X44’. I even measured it one day; they count the tongue that is used for towing! It was in reality 12’X40’.

Carla called it the Hot Cracker box. The crook where we paid $1,500 for our new home didn’t even tell us that for that price; “why would we believe the AC worked properly?” Pitiful. Makes you want to say %#*#$! We finally found a small used window unit and put it in the bedroom. It lasted one summer. What was that word again?

We had cold plates for supper most summer nights. Salad, chicken salad, anything that did not require cooking and turning on the gas stove; therefore, losing any cooling effect you had from the AC.

But, after moving in during mid-September, we had a stray pet wander up to our wonderful home. Our house was lousy, but our home was great. We really did like each other, and we still do. You could tell he was hungry so I did the humane thing and gave it some food. We didn’t have much for scraps back then so I started getting real pet food. I set a little blue food dish on our small front porch. I would put food it in for him every evening.

It was odd, but we never saw him in the mornings. We guessed he must have had another home where he was getting food also.

We had him for about a year, and he simply disappeared. I guess he found a better home. I wasn’t sure how, we fed and watered him good. He was never mistreated. But you know, anything can happen, and one day we realized that we did not have a pet anymore. But we did soon find Black-n-Whitey right after that, and we were satisfied as far as pets go. She lived inside with us. A small kitten is easy to keep clean and such, and they house train very easily.

The only thing unresolved with our first pet, we never did settle on a name. We merely said “Here Boy” when we addressed him. So, I guess that was his name. If you read my fishing adventure book, you will remember that from the time I was five years old until I got married, we had three dogs and their names were Stray Boy, Blue Boy, and Hey Boy. So I guess I was in the same frame of mind. Blue Boy and Hey Boy lived with my parents on the other side of McHenry Creek during mine and Carla’s early marriage days, so they coexisted with Here Boy. I guess they got along okay as the other two pets spent a lot of time on our side of the creek as we did not live that far away.

One big happy family.

  Black N Whitey

Here Boy – Yes! He’s a “possum!

Thanks for spending a few minutes with me. See you next Friday.