Cool thread, lots of cute pics.
We currently have three: Kinder (the tabby, pronounced like the first half of kindergarten), Jasmine (black cat), and Squirt (the mouse).
All 3 came as strays at various different times. The mouse lived in our apartment for several months before we finally caught her. We could hear her running around at night and found lots of mouse poop in places, but the live traps never worked... she just ate the food without triggering them! Finally one day Kinder was eyeing the closet intently, so I opened it and out came the mouse. The cat pounced and dropped the mouse at my feet. So I grabbed the mouse (still stunned) and dropped her in a little cage. We've had her ever since (almost 3 years ago now) - figured leaving her in the wild would probably just make her some coyote's snack one day.
Here, Kinder's a little miffed that she couldn't enjoy her catch...
My wife and I are both more dog people, but we love all animals and could never turn them away. Finally we just bought our first house and are getting ready for a dog. I like labs and my wife likes pugs. We wanted to rescue a shelter dog and labs are much easier to find at shelters, so we thought we'd get one of those first. But then we saw this little pug, Bruno, on a shelter's website and our hearts melted. We met him this past Saturday and he's just the cutest little thing. He got a little respiratory infection at the shelter so the vet wanted to keep him another week, but this Friday we get to take him home so he can have fun terrorizing the cats...
Whoah, guess I wrote a bit much there... what can I say, I love my pets.
BTW,
http://www.petfinder.org is a great site if you want to rescue a pet from a shelter.