Transcript of AE 1438 - The Goss: What Pets Did We Have Growing Up in Australia?

Pete:
Dad. Was there ever a pet you liked more than the rest of us?

Ian:
Was there a pet I liked more than you?

Pete:
The rest of the family.

Ian:
The rest of the family. I think my first pet was probably the one. He was the dog I grew up with. My mum had a dog. When, when Mum and Dad got married in England, when they got back to Australia, Dad bought her a dog and um so he was about one year old when I was born. So I sort of really grew up with him for the first, you know, 11 years of my life until he passed away.

Pete:
Kicked the bucket?

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
What was his name?

Ian:
Butch.

Pete:
Butch.

Ian:
Butch. He was a boxer.

Pete:
So you liked him more than us before we were born?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
It's a fair call.

Ian:
So it's like, when you grow up with an animal, it's sort of it's different. We've had lots and lots and lots of animals.

Pete:
Mhm.

Ian:
And they all got their own quirks. And you love them for different reasons.

Pete:
G'day, guys! Welcome to the Aussie English podcast. Grab a cuppa, get comfy and let's have a yarn! Today we're talking about the pets we grew up with, the lovely ones, the absolute troublemakers, and the ones Dad probably treated better than me. So yeah. Okay, what was the first animal you remember living with? What was its name and what did it look like? So you were saying Butch? Butch. The one that you remember?

Ian:
Yeah. Butch. He was a dog we had. When I was born, mum had him. So.

Pete:
What made her choose Butch? And what sort of breed was it?

Ian:
He was a boxer. And I don't know why she chose a boxer, but, um.

Pete:
So that's a sport he liked playing. But what breed was he?

Ian:
Yeah. Ha ha. Boom boom. Yeah,

Pete:
Yeah. So who decided to get it? Mum did?

Ian:
Well, Dad was, he wanted to buy her a dog and she wanted a boxer. For some unknown reason. I never actually discussed with her why I was too young at the time, I suppose. And then afterwards it was probably irrelevant. So yeah, she just liked boxers. They were friendly dogs.

Pete:
Yeah. Where did it sleep?

Ian:
Wherever it wanted to. No, it was. It was an outdoor dog.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
And yeah, in winter, he slept inside in front of the heater. But.

Pete:
Yeah. So he was allowed inside during winter.

Ian:
Oh, he was allowed inside all the time, but he preferred being outside. So summer he slept outside.

Pete:
And how big was it?

Ian:
Boxers are sort of medium to large-ish dogs. Yeah. Probably weighed, I don't know, 30 kilos. So.

Pete:
And what did you feed it? And who was supposed to look after it?

Ian:
Yeah. Well he back in- back in those days, there was no, no such thing as buying specialist pet food. Really? He basically ate table scraps!

Pete:
Whatever was left over!

Ian:
And we used to give him canned dog food as well. But, you know, just basically table scraps. He'd eat anything.

Pete:
So you did have dog food. Like, that you would get in a can or something from the shops.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
What was that usually? Is that just leftovers from the butcher or the...

Ian:
It's just all, all the awful and rubbish that's, you know, all the leftover stuff that they throw together and they probably put a few vitamins and minerals and things in to make sure that it's balanced. But.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
I'm not sure that back in the early 1960s, the pet food science was quite what it is today.

Pete:
So were you responsible for feeding it?

Ian:
Yeah, mostly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And certainly when I was older and older as in, you know, he, he died when I was 11, but 11 or 12. But yeah, he, it was obviously when I was a little, little kid, two years old, I wasn't feeding the dog. But.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But most of the time it was me feeding him, but occasionally my sisters would as well.

Pete:
What was he like?

Ian:
He was great. He was really friendly and he was just. He was with us everywhere we went. So, you know, back in those days, you know, you didn't have. Well, we had big gates on our driveway, separating the backyard from the front yard. And so he was in the backyard, but he could these gates were about six foot tall, but he could jump over the gates. He would just leap up, hook his front legs over the top and scramble over.

Pete:
He wasn't clearing it.

Ian:
No, he wasn't clear. But he could, he could get over the over the gates. So, but they, those gates weren't, weren't closed most of the time they were open. So. Yeah. That was back in those days. People just had their dogs out and about, dogs out in the street and things which you can't do anymore. You know, rightly so too. But.

Pete:
When did that change? Because I'm always talking to students who are from places like Turkey, for example, where they'll be like the weirdest cultural shock I had was there were no cats outside just roaming around, you know, dogs in the street. And the same with Kel, my wife coming from Brazil. She was like, well, there's no just dogs running around. And I'm like, no, we don't have that. So back in your day, that was the case.

Ian:
Yeah, it was.

Pete:
It was much more common?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
When did that change?

Ian:
Oh, probably about 1980s, I reckon.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
Late 70s. Early 80s I think. Yeah. Local councils realised that there were just too many problems with dogs marauding around.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And...

Pete:
And I assume a lot were getting hit by cars.

Ian:
Or getting hit by cars.

Pete:
Killing people's chickens.

Ian:
Yeah. And yeah. And attacking people in the street and barking at them and just being a general nuisance, I think.

Pete:
Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I remember being as a kid with our first dog, Dusty, where we lived up in Kallista. And it was always a big kerfuffle. It was a big issue if he got out.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And he still had his balls, right? He hadn't been castrated.

Ian:
I know. So he was off on the hunt. Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. Tis the season. Like, "Where are the ladies?"

Ian:
"I smell ladies."

Pete:
And he would just run off. Right?

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
So take me back to an ordinary afternoon with your pet boxer, Butch, in your yard. If I walked in to your yard or house, what would be... What would I see?

Ian:
If you walked in, he would have just barked his head off at you.

Pete:
In an aggressive way?

Ian:
In an aggressive way.

Pete:
Oh, really?

Ian:
Yeah, yeah. He is very defensive. To the point of, when Mum and Dad had decided they weren't going to have any more children. And they were getting rid of all of the. I've got two younger sisters, so they were getting rid of all of the, you know, baby things in particular. And they gave our old pram to one of the neighbours who had just had a baby. And we got a phone call one day from the grocer's shop saying, "Can you come and get your dog?" And you know, this is like the dog, the shops were 400m away from us, but the dog had followed her down the street following the pram and, she'd left the pram outside the the shop because the. You couldn't- back in those days they weren't really wide aisles and things in supermarkets, the little grocer's shop and you couldn't walk a pram around it. So she left the baby in the pram outside the shop. And the dog was guarding it and wouldn't let her near it. He was guarding the pram, so he was he was really protective of us and anything related to us. And yeah, so we had to go down and pick up the dog and tell him to leave the pram alone. So.

Pete:
That was my next question was going to be what, what did the dog do in its lifetime that had you guys talking about it years later.

Ian:
Uh, the...

Pete:
That's, that's one, one of those stories I've heard many times.

Ian:
Yeah. And the, the other one is that boxers, particularly, back in our day when they used to have their tails docked.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Can't swim.

Pete:
What, do you want to explain what that is?

Ian:
Docking is just removing their tails when they're puppies. Just leaving them with a little stump.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And that was the, you know, purebred. That was the breed style at the time.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Because they were originally as, as fighting dogs.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And so fighting dogs had their tails docked because.

Pete:
Often their ears as well. Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. So, but you know, boxers nowadays don't have that. They have tails.

Pete:
It's a weird one when you see Rottweilers with...

Ian:
With tails. I know.

Pete:
It's sort of like it doesn't look...

Ian:
Rottweilers the same. Yeah. They were fighting dogs.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. So, they can't swim. At least they can't swim very well because they're very front heavy.

Pete:
Ah, okay.

Ian:
They've got big shoulders and a big fat head.

Pete:
So it's an anatomical...

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
It's not that they're not swimming...

Ian:
No.

Pete:
Physically they're just like...

Ian:
And so he would be, he'd be a sort of four legged submarine. And we used to take him down to the beach. But he loved the beach. And he would go collecting rocks and, and he would just walk out into the sea and walk out. Well, not dive. He just walk out and, and go. And with his head down, picking up rocks and bringing them back again. And there's a couple of times where he wouldn't let us take the rock away from him. And he brought it all the way home.

Pete:
I feel like that damaged his teeth quite a bit. Yeah.

Ian:
He's brainless. So.

Pete:
So what other pets did you have as a kid growing up?

Ian:
When he went, we had a, we had a cat.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And then we had, you know, rabbits and guinea pigs. And we also had.

Pete:
You had Guinea pigs as well?

Ian:
We did.

Pete:
And rabbits.

Ian:
Yeah. And we had two tortoises.

Pete:
Mhm.

Ian:
Terrapins. Yeah. Long neck terrapins.

Pete:
Yeah. Freshwater turtles.

Ian:
Yeah. 2 or 3 of those over the period of time. So we built them this great palace of an enclosure out in a corner out the back yard. And one of them dug its way out. Of course, as they do, because when your kids and you build things, you don't think about, you know, putting wire mesh and things underground...

Pete:
You wouldn't think a turtle really digs. It's one of those stupid things when you actually know a bit about turtle biology, you know? No shit, Sherlock, but you just look at them and you're like, this doesn't look like something that...

Ian:
I mean, I was twelve years old. What are you. Yeah. You're not thinking about that?

Pete:
Yeah. Why did you get terrapins?

Ian:
Oh, it was just.

Pete:
Why not?

Ian:
Why not? Yeah.

Pete:
Where'd you get them from?

Ian:
I don't know whether we got from a pet shop or we had friends or. No, we didn't find them. We we had friends who had them or something, I can't remember, but yeah, we had two of them. Fred and Fertile.

Pete:
Fred and Fertile.

Ian:
Don't ask me why Fertile, but.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. But a boy and a girl.

Pete:
Mhm. Good choice.

Ian:
We thought they were going to have babies. Of course they never did.

Pete:
Too busy escaping!

Ian:
Yeah, exactly. Hibernating and escaping.

Pete:
How long were guinea pigs a thing for? Cause that's one we grew up with. Rabbits and guinea pigs.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
My sister and I. And now my kids have guinea pigs as well. But it's one of those weird things where I think. When did these first come to Australia? Because they're a South American animal that was domesticated as food, because they use them as a food source in a lot of the countries there. They're just an interesting pet to have in Australia.

Ian:
I know, I know. Well, rabbits, the same thing. Just bring feral rabbits to Australia for us. In the 19th century for hunting.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, um. And all of a sudden people have decided, "Oh, rabbits are a cute animal to have as a pet", which they actually are. Because they're clean and they're smart.

Pete:
Yeah. They are pretty clever, aren't they?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Did you like guinea pigs more than rabbits?

Ian:
No, I think rabbits. Rabbits have got personality. Guinea pigs do a little bit as well, but mostly they just squeak at you and scratch. That's okay.

Pete:
Tell the story about our rabbit and guinea pigs growing up with my sister. Because we had some pretty funny stories with them. Right? So I had Peta Rabbit.

Ian:
You did have Peta Rabbit.

Pete:
I named it Peter, but it was a girl, so it was P E T A.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And then Annika, my sister. What did she have? Fuzzy Pig? Was that the first one?

Ian:
Yeah, I can't...

Pete:
Olga the Polga? Olga?

Ian:
Yeah. She had a whole series of guinea pigs.

Pete:
There was a story called. I think there must have been two stories with guinea pigs. One of them was Olga The Polga and Fuzzy Pig must have been from another story or something I think.

Ian:
Must have been.

Pete:
And she had Fuzzy Pig One, Two and Three.

Ian:
Yes!

Pete:
Because they kept dying!

Ian:
Kept dying. And then, well, Peter, Peta Rabbit killed a couple of them.

Pete:
Yeah, my rabbit did.

Ian:
Its aggressive thing.

Pete:
Yeah, well what happened? I remember there were a few funny stories with Peter Rabbit. Because you really bonded with the rabbit, didn't you?

Ian:
Oh, I loved her. She was great. Yeah, she. Because we used to have her inside, and she'd just come and sit up on my lap like a cat.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And go to sleep on my lap while we were sitting in the lounge watching TV.

Pete:
When did that go wrong?

Ian:
Yeah, when I had a vasectomy.

Pete:
Do you want to explain what a vasectomy is?

Ian:
Well...

Pete:
For the listener!

Ian:
I it's...

Pete:
You don't have to go into...

Ian:
Male sterilisation!

Pete:
You had your tubes cut.

Ian:
Yes, exactly. And so, yes, I was a little bit tender in the groyne, when I got back from the operation.

Pete:
Jeez, you would have been about my age, right?

Ian:
Younger than that, yeah.

Pete:
Really?

Ian:
I was 35. 36?

Pete:
Yeah. Okay. Alright. So, yeah, we were 5 or 6.

Ian:
Yeah. And just had the rabbit came in and was sitting on my lap. And then, well, she came up to sit on my lap and she jumped onto my lap. And I'm not sure whether she hit the roof first or I hit the roof first.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But ah...

Pete:
I remember the scream.

Ian:
Yeah, it was not, not a pleasant experience for either of us, I don't think.

Pete:
And then...

Ian:
All was forgiven and she came back.

Pete:
She used to be a serial pest with the television.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Do you want to describe that story?

Ian:
Yeah. She used to get behind the, the cupboards because we had her inside and she'd just wander around and she'd get behind the cupboards. And at one time she, she chewed through the, the electric wire.

Pete:
The TV went off!

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
And there was some times too, where...

Ian:
Fortunately she...

Pete:
And the TV wouldn't turn on.

Ian:
I know!

Pete:
I'd come and be like, what the fuck's wrong with the TV? And then you'd realise she chewed through...

Ian:
She chewed through the wires.

Pete:
And you just like, how did she not get electrocuted?

Ian:
Well, she was lucky, I think, she chewed through the, the neutral, but, um. Yes. Well...

Pete:
I guess maybe bone doesn't, doesn't have electricity?

Ian:
Don't conduct electricity.

Pete:
Speaking of pets.

Ian:
Pets? Pests!

Pete:
Yeah, this is scrap. He has decided to come and walk over the table where we are.

Ian:
Yeah, he probably probably adjust all the the volumes on the soundboard.

Pete:
I know that constantly happens.

Ian:
Yeah. Well that's alright. One of our cats keeps turning the TV off. Or changing the channels, just stepping on the remote. If you leave it on the coffee table, she jumps up there and just steps on it. So some random button will do something.

Pete:
Yeah. So how did, how did you guys have the rabbits? And, or the rabbit and the guinea pigs inside when we had cats as well? Because we had Mickey and Mandy.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
We had one, Mickey was the calico cat and Mandy was black.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
So how did they survive or did the cats just had no interest in eating them?

Ian:
Didn't really have much interest. They the I seem to remember the cats liked the rabbit and that was the same as us when we were kids because we had a cat and a rabbit at the same time. And they would play together. They would play together. They would chase each other around the backyard and have, you know, and then they wouldn't sleep together. But they were perfectly happy being around each other. And playing, and interacting.

Pete:
So they obviously the rabbits, they smart enough that they need some sort of interaction or socialisation or stimuli.

Ian:
They were very social animals. So they, you know, they live in large family groups.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah. That doesn't surprise me, I guess, but I, I don't know, I keep bringing the guinea pigs inside and I'm like, because Joey always wants to sit on the couch with the pig, her guinea pig, Speedy. And I've been spending so much time with it recently. Like I try and do about half an hour to an hour a day.

Ian:
Socialising the pig.

Pete:
Trying to make it as sort of friendly and domesticated as possible. And it's really funny because they freak the fuck out.

Ian:
Oh yeah. Yeah. And they and they'd have that vibration, that sort of almost subsonic.

Pete:
You know what that is? It's adrenaline. They freak out.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Like they're on fight or flight when you pick them up. And it's only just been the last week that when I go and get my daughter's guinea pig Speedy out of the enclosure, I'm there every night. I'm like, fuck it, I'll go get him, put him on my lap and just chill out with him. He's probably going to piss on me, but whatever. I can put him on my lap and chill with him for an hour or so. But it's only been the last week that he stopped doing those shakes.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
So I'm like, ah, he's finally getting used to being picked up and held. And the other thing I keep noticing is he puts his head up and sniffs, and he's looking around and trying to walk around a lot more.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
But it is funny. Peaches and Scrappy, my cats, always want to sit on the couch with me. They want to be where I am. Scrappy is very curious about the guinea pigs. I don't know if he'd attack them. I, part of me wants to think he wouldn't. The other part of me thinks he's a predator. And if he's gonna do it.

Ian:
Never trust a predator.

Pete:
Peaches is terrified of any time I've held the guinea pig close to her, she just gets up, looks weird, and runs. Like, bails.

Ian:
Yeah, if she was left alone though, it would be different, I suspect.

Pete:
Yeah, it's a weird one. I don't know, but. Yeah, it's been, it's been funny trying to sort of get the guinea pigs to chill out a bit. They're growing so fast. And we used to, the ones we used to have at Kallista when we were growing up, my sister and I, I remember they got used to the sound of the car, didn't they?

Ian:
Oh yeah. Yeah, I, there were times where...

Pete:
You would turn onto the street.

Ian:
I'd be out walking in, working in the yard, and you and your mum would be out shopping or something and I would the, the pigs would be sitting in there because we used to have them in enclosure in the, in the carport.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And all of a sudden there'd be this wee wee wee wee wee...

Pete:
Yeah, and you'd be like, "What? What's going on?"...

Ian:
And then the dog would start barking.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And then I would hear the car turn up the, as soon as you turned up the gravel road.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Because we were the second house on the street or something. You'd hear it and go, "Oh, there's a car coming." And then you realise it's ours.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But the guinea pigs would hear it first, and then the dog would hear it.

Pete:
It's nuts, isn't it? Because I never thought about how good the hearing of animals like guinea pigs. I mean, it makes sense. Their prey animals, right? So they need to be able to hear the predators coming after them. But it was it's one of those funny things where they get acclimated to certain sounds or things.

Ian:
And they wouldn't do it for any other car that came up. It was only our car.

Pete:
Yeah. They knew...

Ian:
When you came up...

Pete:
There was obviously some...

Ian:
Signal, sound.

Pete:
That frequency. Yeah. You wonder what they were latching on to.

Ian:
Who knows.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Who knows.

Pete:
It is pretty funny. But I remember that and I think it was probably they associated it with food, right. They assumed they were getting fed.

Ian:
Oh yeah. Yeah.

Pete:
"Here we go!"

Ian:
Because as soon as you and Annie would turn up, you'd feed them because that's how you interact with them. You go and get them some food.

Pete:
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So which pet did you beg your parents to get? And do you remember the story differently? You know.

Ian:
No, I don't...

Pete:
Was it you harassing them?

Ian:
No, I don't think I was ever begging for a pet. I remember one of my sisters was begging for a goldfish and- Yeah. Goldfish, really? But yeah, that's what she had. And she ended up getting it.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Which is fine because they're really easy to look after...

Pete:
Low maintenance..

Ian:
It's pretty low maintenance. Just clean out the tank once a month. Throw some food in once a day. Yeah. But yeah, so that's really the only begging for a pet, because we always had pets.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
So, you know, they're always, you know, some new pet coming around.

Pete:
So who's, who, were most of them just sort of yours? Were they everyone's? Did everyone have their different animals...?

Ian:
Everyone's the, the dog was just well dog was mum's but.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. He was just the family pet. And then when he went, we got a cat and- cat called Panther. Guess what colour she was.

Pete:
Black?

Ian:
Yeah! Very good! We were highly original, as children.

Pete:
Oh yeah. That's always the case, right. "Joey, what do you want to call the goldfish?" "Oh, Goldie." Oh. Good idea. Very clever. "How did you come up with that?" "I don't know!"

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
"You've got an elephant. toy. What do you want to call him?" "I'll call him Ellie."

Ian:
Hey, you know. Yeah. So we had a cat called Panther, and she. She was just a family cat, but I think she latched on to me, and so she would always sleep on my bed.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
In fact, on or in, in winter, she'd sleep in the bed on. In summer, she'd just sleep on the bed. But other than that- Oh. And then she had kittens and one of them became one of my sister's cats.

Pete:
Yeah. Is this like, at home? Or when they moved out or.

Ian:
Sorry?

Pete:
Was this at home? Okay.

Ian:
Yeah. And yeah, so that one of the sisters got to keep one of the cats. One of the kittens and the others got given away. And that was in, I think when the younger sister decided she wanted a pet as well. And the goldfish came up.

Pete:
Yes. Ah. "I want one too!" "Yeah, me too!"

Ian:
I have another cat. Yeah, "me too".

Pete:
"Can we have another cat?"

Ian:
Exactly.

Pete:
So was desexing not popular back then for animals? Something you just didn't do, or...?

Ian:
Well, we- cats and dogs used to be desexed a bit older than they are now.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And our cat, when, you know, she had kittens when she was six months old, five, five and a half months old.

Pete:
That happened with our first... Peaches...

Ian:
She got pregnant before she was four months old.

Pete:
Yeah. It's crazy. Right? How quickly they can just...

Ian:
So, yeah, she was always going to be desexed, but typically they wouldn't desex them until they were about six months old.

Pete:
Yeah, okay. Because now it's at, what, three months old?

Ian:
In which case she actually did get desexed when she was about seven months old, after she'd had the kittens.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
So.

Pete:
Cause that happened with us. We had, we we adopted Peaches, but she, she was a stray that had gotten pregnant and obviously been given up for adoption or caught or something, had the kittens. And then I don't even think she was about a year old when we got her. And they were like, yep, she's desexed. She's gone through the full cycle of life in her first year. Like. So who chose the names for these animals?

Ian:
Well, obviously Butch was mum's. She called him Butch.

Pete:
Why? Because he was butch?

Ian:
I don't know, because he was butch.

Pete:
Big and strong. Yeah?

Ian:
Big and strong. We chose the, it was a general consensus amongst the three of us children to call the cat Panther. And then it was sort of whoever's pet it was, like the turtles and things and, and the guinea pigs and the rabbits. And the rabbit. Believe it or not, it's name was Cheska Waffles.

Pete:
Cheska Waffles. Where's that from?

Ian:
I have no idea. That was just invented.

Pete:
Cheska Waffles.

Ian:
Wasn't me! That was one of the sisters decided it. Cheska. And it got called Cheska. And everybody thought it was Chester. But. But it was a cute rabbit. It was a big grey and white one. A bit like your Peta Rabbit.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
More white than yours. Yours was grey with white. This one was white with grey.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah. It's funny, Noah called his guinea pig because we got two of them in the end. It's so it becomes this cycle. We've had guinea pigs. We bought two when the kids were really young, it was that Bazza and Stevo. Stevo died within a few years from I don't know what, um.

Ian:
Old age.

Pete:
Probably.

Ian:
They only lived till like 5 or 6, I think.

Pete:
Yeah. And then we were like, "Oh, poor Bazza, he's all by himself. These are social animals. We'll get him a mate." We got Pedro. Bazza dies. Pedro is all alone. And I'm like, oh fuck. I just feel bad for these poor little bastards.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
So we got another two and I wanted to get another one. And then the kids are like, "Pedro's yours, he's not ours. We want one each." And we go there and they're all, there's these brothers, three brothers. And I was like, "Well, we're not getting all three, but alright, you can get one each." Like, fuck, what's the difference between having two and three guinea pigs? Whatever. You know, they're all males.

Ian:
As long as they're all males, you're fine.

Pete:
Noah calls his. I was like, "What do you want to call yours, Joey?" "Speedy!" "Oh, okay. Yeah. Why is that?" "He's fast!" I know I had one called Speedy as well. And then Noah called his Herobrine. And I was like, "Where the hell did that come from?"

Ian:
Yeah, just made it up.

Pete:
No, came from Minecraft.

Ian:
Oh. Of course! The world of Minecraft, which I am completely oblivious.

Pete:
Exactly. I was like, is it? And for the first month I thought it was Hero Brian.

Ian:
Brian.

Pete:
Like the name Brian.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And Hero in front. "He's the hero. Brian." But it's "Herobrine". Like, is that baby fish?

Ian:
Brine.

Pete:
Brine? Brine shrimp? Shrimp.

Ian:
No. Brine is...

Pete:
Or is that..

Ian:
Just salty water?

Pete:
Yeah, I know that the words associated with like sea animals, but because it's not one we very often use. And I was like, what the hell?

Ian:
Brine is just a salty water liquid mixture.

Pete:
Yeah. So anyway, it's called Herobrine.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
So and I'm spending time with him as well, trying to domesticate him.

Ian:
Uh huh, well, with a name like that, he'll know a bit more work.

Pete:
It's it's funny how like placid guinea pigs are, man. Like they obviously quickly bred out the vicious nature in them because they're the most there would be the easiest animal for any predator to kill.

Ian:
Oh, yeah.

Pete:
Because they're just so sort of like, "Huh?" Like, and they don't, you can pick them up. You can put them upside down. They don't bite you. They're just kind of like, "huh", the whole time. It's almost just like this living brain, dead animal. It's just warm that you can pat. Which of your pets had the strongest personality?

Ian:
Panther.

Pete:
Yeah?

Ian:
Yeah. She was crazy.

Pete:
Why?

Ian:
She just was! She. She's just cooked. She cooked. She. At one point. Because again, cats outdoors all the time. Except at night. She'd come inside.

Pete:
At least back then. Huh?

Ian:
Yeah. And she used to sleep in the driveway, just on the concrete driveway in the sun.

Pete:
Oh, nice.

Ian:
And we kept thinking, "Oh, some dog's going to walk past and run up and attack her." And this German shepherd came sniffing up the driveway and she went for it.

Pete:
And tore him a new one.

Ian:
Chased him up the road! It was just like literally about 50m up the road. She's chasing this dog and the dog's tail between the legs and yelping and taking off. But she was mad and she was little. She was just a little black ball of fire.

Pete:
It's funny, isn't it? That stereotype. You always have this stereotype growing up of like dogs killing cats, hunting cats. I've never of all the videos that I've seen online of interactions between dogs and cats, I've never seen a dog messing a cat up. I'm sure it happened.

Ian:
I'm sure they would if a dog wanted to.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
They would just.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
The cat would get the first punch in, but after that...

Pete:
Grab it and shake it.

Ian:
Grab it and shake.

Pete:
But the dogs are always fucking terrified.

Ian:
No wonder they're stupid. These animals got pointy bits.

Pete:
Sharp. Exactly. And they go for the face.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
I know it's a weird one though, because you are just like, you'll have this Great Dane or something, and a small kitten, and the kitten will be, you know, in its face and it'll be freaking out and you're like, you're 100 times its size.

Ian:
Well, we've got, we've well, as you know, we've got a new kitten at home. We've had her for about 5 or 6 weeks. And she, the other cat and she, they just chase each other around the house and hiss and carry on. So they're not best buddies, but they enjoy playing together. But the dog, oh, Shh. This cat just adores him.

Pete:
Really?

Ian:
Yeah. She just sits on his mat, rolls over and pats him. Whacks him on the face with soft paws.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Interact with me. Interact with me. And the dog doesn't know what to do. He's just standing there going, ooh!

Pete:
So does he like her?

Ian:
He does. He's really interested and wants to. If we let him, he would chase her around the house, but that would just fucking bedlam. He just got 30 kilo Labrador.

Pete:
Jeez.

Ian:
Yeah. Sliding around on the floor. But yeah. So. Yes. Cats and dogs, they they have an interesting relationship.

Pete:
Yeah. Did your pets have, like, their people? I think you said Panther was yours.

Ian:
Panther was mine.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. And my grandfather used to live with us. And the, Panther's kitten, that we ended up keeping him. She got to be an old cat as well. But, her name was Noodles. She, my grandfather thought that she was the good cat because she used to. When she was outside, she would just go and sleep under the daisy bush in the backyard. But not hiding. She would be obvious. You could see her under there. And my grandfather used to, you know, be out, you know, he'd do two minutes of go. So I'm going to go out gardening. He'd do two minutes of gardening and then get the deck chair out and sit in the sun and doze off. And he'd always watching this cat. So he was always, oh, that's the good cat. That's my cat. But he couldn't tell the difference between the two of them. And so he would always be sneaking them food under the table where he'd have his breakfast, he'd have toast and Vegemite and a cup of tea for breakfast most of the time. And he, you know, he's slipping a little bit of toasted Vegemite under the table and thinking, Oh, this is the good cat, isn't it? And most of the time it was Panther who he didn't like because she was snarly, except when there was Vegemite and toast. So.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. But, yeah, well, most of them were just sort of family pets really. There was...

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
No real association, even though there was a notional owner. But the, you know, the pet doesn't know who the owner is. They choose a person.

Pete:
It's funny, I didn't really I don't know, I wanted the cats, my cats now to like me and want me as their person. And they have latched on to me because they're always hanging out with me.

Ian:
Yeah, well, you're home all the time.

Pete:
Exactly, exactly. And, Noah, it's funny seeing Noah, my son, going through the same sort of annoyance with this is my cat, though. "Scrappy's my cat. Why doesn't he like me as much as you?" I had the same.

Ian:
Seven year old child.

Pete:
I know.

Ian:
And you're you're stupid, you know. You.

Pete:
You're crazy. Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. Ah! Come with me. Come with me. And the cat's going.

Pete:
And picking him up and carrying him around. And also, you're just not home as often as I am.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
And yeah, so it's funny.

Ian:
And who feeds them?

Pete:
Me. Yeah. And I noticed, so I noticed exactly the same thing when I was a kid. I was doing the same stuff as Noah. I was always like, why don't the cats become my cats?

Ian:
I want to wrestle them. Yeah, no, they're not happy about that. Yeah.

Pete:
I know, I know. So what about pets? When we were a little older, my sister and I growing up in Ocean Grove with you guys. What else did we have? So you guys had three cats? We had.

Ian:
We just had serial cats.

Pete:
Yeah. Serial.

Ian:
Serial cats.

Pete:
There was always one.

Ian:
There's always at least one and maybe two once. And then for a while, we had three. One of which was your sisters. And when she moved out and got a, you know, when she moved to Melbourne, she didn't take the cat with her. But when she came back and got a house, she, she took the cat with her, but, so then we were down to two. We've always had dogs.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
You know, one dog at a time. Just serial Labradors. You know.

Pete:
Why the darker ones? You sort of, you had a white. We had..

Ian:
We had, we had two gold ones.

Pete:
Christie. And that was before I was...

Ian:
Before you were born and then Dusty when you were a kid.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And then it wasn't really a you know, it wasn't. I'm never having a golden Labrador again. It was just. Oh, well, we'll try a black one.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
We liked it. And we got another one.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
We had a little brown one for a while, but unfortunately he died as a puppy. He got meningitis, which...

Pete:
He did for like a few weeks...

Ian:
A week.

Pete:
Fucked. Yeah. And then I remember that that was devastating.

Ian:
It was. Poor little guy. And yeah. So we've always had dogs. You had reptiles. So you had dragons.

Pete:
We had a turtle called Oscar.

Ian:
A turtle called Oscar.

Pete:
He was a wild one that we sort of adopted because someone ran over him.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Broke his shell.

Ian:
Yeah. And then he...

Pete:
Where did he come? Did he come from Laurie? Or Laurie ended up with him. One of our family friends.

Ian:
Laurie ended up with him. Yeah.

Pete:
Where did he come from?

Ian:
I don't know. One of your friends just said, Oh, I've got this broken tortoise...

Pete:
Yeah. I can't remember where it came from!

Ian:
But he. He was fine. He was pretty cool.

Pete:
Oscar outlived everything...

Ian:
He did! And then. And then you had the snake? Black headed python.

Pete:
Yeah. Kenny.

Ian:
Kenny. Which is pretty cool. Except when you moved out. You know, Kenny stayed at our place, and I was the only other person who would handle him, and I did. I wasn't, you know, I was working all the time, and so I didn't handle him that much. And then he just became a bit unruly. And...

Pete:
He was always really cage defensive.

Ian:
He was. But yeah, that's.

Pete:
Then he would strike at the glass if you walk past and sort of freak out. The weird thing, though, was as soon as you got him out, he was really. It was like a little puppy.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
He was just friendly and just sort of chilled out. But if he was in the cage by himself.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
He was aggressive, which was weird.

Ian:
Yeah. So, he was pretty cool, though.

Pete:
I know. They're beautiful snakes. Black headed pythons. If you guys haven't seen them, they're a non-venomous snake native to Australia. You find them, I think, in the northern Northern Territory. Yeah. And they have these beautiful stripes on them. And a dark black head.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
They're very, very cool.

Ian:
Yeah. They're good.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Common pet snake.

Pete:
Yeah. So what, what made you always get heaps of cats? Is it just. Is it, is it you? Was it mum?

Ian:
Oh, we just like cats. They're fun. And again same thing. Usually if you've got one you probably get another one. Because despite the fact that, you know, in the wild they're loners...

Pete:
Well, they're social...

Ian:
Domesticated, domesticated cats are social.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly.

Ian:
Wildcats are not. But domesticated cats are. So.

Pete:
I know they. Yeah, it's it's part of it is just the, it's almost like there's mental stimulation for you because you just see other animals interacting around you as a person at home. Like for me at least I notice being at home all the time and especially late, late at night, the cats are always doing something, walking around, sleeping, having fun, playing, fighting, meowing, wanting a pat. There's just this other entity.

Ian:
Other living thing existing in your space.

Pete:
Yeah, I don't know. And there's something nice about that, I think, and that's.

Ian:
There is.

Pete:
For me at least with a dog, it's a little too high maintenance. It needs your attention a lot more, whereas the cat, it has moments where it does.

Ian:
I'm a cat. I like dogs, and we've always had dogs, but if I was a choice, I'm a cat person rather than a dog person.

Pete:
Yeah, because they're a lot more hands off.

Ian:
Yeah, yeah. Although the, once the two we've got at the moment, they just follow you around the house.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Like two little dogs. And the kitten, she's ridiculous. She, she's found one of my little soft toys that I can't one of the, you know, one of you or one of the grandkids gave it to me ages ago, and it just sits on my desk.

Pete:
Yeah.

Pete:
A little mascot on the desk and she comes up and steals it and runs away with it.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And it just, it just appears in different places around the house and I'll pick it up again. And this morning she had it, brought it downstairs. She obviously stole it. I had my office door open and she stole it from there, brought it down. And I was sitting having breakfast at the dining table and put it on the dining table next to me, and she just jumped up on there, grabbed it and ran off with it. So it's, it's sort of the reverse of a dog playing fetch. She just wants you to.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
"Hide!"

Pete:
"Hide this so I have to find it!"

Ian:
So you gotta find it and then bring it back and I'll hide it again.

Pete:
The weird thing is Peaches and, Peaches and Scrappy to some degree, but mainly Peaches, keeps picking up this little Woody, from Toy Story, doll that we have in the house. I don't know who got it, but. And she's it just appears in different places. And it's weird because Toy Story is this story about toys that are living, but they whenever there's a person there, they're like on the ground, like inanimate objects. But as soon as the person goes, they wake up and have a life again. And so I have those moments where I open my, my door to the office and Woody's just on the ground and I'm like, what the fuck? And it's just Peaches picking him up and going. She puts him in his mouth and you just hear this [Pete makes cat sounds]. And just drags him around the house looking for someone.

Ian:
It's the cat version of the elf on the shelf.

Pete:
Yeah!

Ian:
You never know where it's going to be.

Pete:
And Scrappy just started doing it. I saw him doing it this week. He did it last night, in fact, too. He's found one of the kids beanies for the Geelong cats, and he likes picking that up and dragging it around the house doing the same [Pete makes cat sounds].

Ian:
They're funny, aren't they?

Pete:
Yeah. It's weird.

Ian:
Yeah. Well the, the other one that this little kittens got is a, a cat soft toy that your mother got. I don't know why, but she got it and was sitting up. It's not like we don't have enough soft toys for kids. We've got a whole basket full of them. But yeah, this thing and it's, it's bigger than she is.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And she, it's not that heavy, but she grabs it and drags it around. It's like a leopard with an antelope, you know, that sort of thing.

Pete:
Yeah, with their arms...

Ian:
Dragging them with... Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
They're sort of awkwardly walking around in the Serengeti plains.

Ian:
Exactly. It's it's insane.

Pete:
So which pet was the hardest to keep out of trouble? Out of all these pets you remember from being a kid all the way up to now? Which was the hardest one to kind of keep in control?

Ian:
Probably your cat, Merlin.

Pete:
So this was the only purebred...

Ian:
The only purebred cat we've ever had. Yeah.

Pete:
Was it ...

Ian:
He was a Burmese.

Pete:
Burmese. Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. Beautiful cat. Absolutely adorable cat. And full of personality. And Burmese are like puppies as well. They just follow you around talking to you. But he was trouble. He was, the things he would get into and, but also because he was...

Pete:
Was it him that pissed everywhere? He was always like, just.

Ian:
He and Max. But mostly, I think because the cats next door.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
We had two male cats next door that would come and, you know, spray on the outside of the windows and the doors. So.

Pete:
My two have never done that. My two now, Scrappy and Peaches, they never do it. Yeah.

Ian:
And girl, female cats, won't.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
It's male cats, a territorial thing. But.

Pete:
Yeah, okay.

Ian:
But yeah, the, he would get into all sorts of things, but also every now and then he'd be outside and you know, we ended up turning him into indoor cat because he would climb up things and couldn't get down. He literally could not get down.

Pete:
Yeah. We would have him outside and he would climb up some of the gum trees and stuff in our backyard.

Ian:
And your mum and I would be scrambling up the tree to get him down.

Pete:
I remember sometimes I would have to gesture to him to, to like jump out and he would put your arm or something...

Ian:
And he'd just jump.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah.

Ian:
But, but he would. And he also, he also had no idea. People always say cats will always land on their feet. Not him!

Pete:
He didn't care! He didn't drop him. He just.

Ian:
Dropped him and he just land. He just fall on his back or his side.

Pete:
Yeah. He wouldn't land on his feet.

Ian:
What's going on here?

Pete:
And he would just roll down the stairs when he was playing too, right?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And just like slide down them and not really care. He didn't have that sense of I need to get upright. I need to get my feet underneath myself.

Ian:
The monkey cat we used to call him and he would, he'd be and he could jump because he was again, he was, he was light. He wasn't a big cat, but he was light as well. And, because we've got in our house, we've got, above all the internal doors, we've got these little window ledges with a small window above the doors.

Pete:
Yeah. So light goes through.

Ian:
And he could and he, you know, two metres high doors. Yeah. He could jump up and get onto the little window at the top two metres. In the air!

Pete:
Where you come. Yeah. We would come home or something and you'd be like, how the fuck did he get up there?

Ian:
And he would just jump. He'd jump up and grab hold and pull himself up. But he could jump two metres in the air. It's ridiculous.

Pete:
That's just cats.

Ian:
Yeah, yeah. The ultimate animals, cats.

Pete:
Well, they're probably the, the most like sort of highly evolved predators that mammal predators that the world has ever seen, right. They're just, everything about them is about hunting.

Ian:
Well, and you look, and you look, at you look at the diversity in cats, and you take cheetahs out of the equation and every other cat's the same.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
They're basically physiologically and physically the same. The only variation is in colour and size.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Cheetahs are different. Because of the way they've evolved to, to their hunt down predators. They're chase predators. Ambush predators. Well, they're not ambush predators, they're chase predators.

Pete:
But as in like, so they have, they have this sudden, sudden burst of speed...

Ian:
But they'll run, they'll run up to hundreds of metres to chase something, whereas lions will run 50m. They're ambush and they're cooperative predators.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah.

Ian:
So cheetahs have evolved like dogs to have longer legs, nonretractile claws.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Their claws are much more like dogs because they need to be.

Pete:
Gripping the ground...

Ian:
Gripping the ground and stuff. So take them out of the equation. Every other cat's the same. And when you when evolution has got it right.

Pete:
Yeah. There's some really weird ones, I think in like Borneo that are for climbing trees they call cloud leopards or whatever they are, there's yeah, there's these, these type of leopard cats. And I remember they have really weird wrists where the wrists turn outwards. Like you're sort of like trying to get your pinky finger to touch your elbow so that they can climb up and down trees easily.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And they, they can kind of flick their, their hands out and get their claws. They're very cool animals.

Ian:
I've only ever seen one in a zoo.

Pete:
Yeah. They'd be pretty nuts. So did any of these animals ever get out, disappear or unexpectedly turn out...

Ian:
All of them!

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. Well, the turtles used to escape, as we've said, and...

Pete:
Yeah, what about Oscar? We had that because we used to clean out his tank. Yeah, we had this big tank in the house and we would. I, I remember I used to wrap him up in a towel.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Where I would try and get him stuck in there and then put the towel in a bucket.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Right. And I think there was one time where I must have either just wrapped him up in a towel or, or put him in the bucket, in the towel and just the bucket fell over. But it was out the front of the house and we had this deck, like close to the ground, right. But you could get onto the sides of it to go into the house. And Oscar, this turtle, just disappeared.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And mum was like, get the fuck off the house.

Ian:
Get under the house and find.

Pete:
And I remember climbing through like, dog poo and dust.

Ian:
And it was you and Annie and one of her friends who shall remain nameless.

Pete:
Yeah. And we did.

Ian:
And you found him. He was under there.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah. Walking around.

Ian:
Yeah, yeah. One of our, you know, Fred disappeared. Fred the Turtle, he disappeared. And a week later, our neighbour from five doors down brought him back up and said, I think this looks like your turtle. So yeah, he came back and then, subsequently, just two of them just disappeared completely. Never to be seen again.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
And...

Pete:
The great escape.

Ian:
Yeah. And the rabbit disappeared a couple of times.

Pete:
Really, but came back.

Ian:
Came back once. And then never saw again.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And and the dog would just be wandering the street, you know, you'd call him and five minutes later he'd appear again.

Pete:
So we had the guinea pigs, like when we had Bazza and Steve, we had this Bunnings guinea pig hutch thing that didn't have a bottom on it. So the idea was cool. You just sort of move it around and they just bulldoze the grass. But annoyingly, sometimes I would forget. I would forget moving it. And so they would eat through all the grass and get super hungry. And obviously it's like looking through prison bars. They're like, The food's right there! It's right there! And so I remember there were a few times where they escaped because they had dug underneath tunnel out. Yeah. And they got under the fence into the neighbour's yard. And so there was one time where I had to get out there. And annoyingly, they're so fucking fast for these small, fat, little vegetarian like animals.

Ian:
With no legs. Yeah, tiny little legs.

Pete:
They're so fast. I went around, asked the neighbour, this poor guy shows up in, like, you know, t shirt and undies, like obviously asleep and was like, can I help you? And I'm like, I think my guinea pigs are in your backyard, dude. Do you mind if I go through and try and find them?

Ian:
Throw them over the fence.

Pete:
And I get over there looking behind all this stuff in his yard, and then I spot them and immediately they just run through the hole under the fence, back into my yard.

Ian:
Block it off.

Pete:
Pretty much like, can you just put some rocks against that or something and then found them.

Ian:
Idiots.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah, we had one, one of our, one of our cats. You remember Mandy, the black cat, the first black cat we had.

Pete:
She was an interesting character, wasn't she?

Ian:
Yeah. Black cat. She was the ultimate black cat syndrome.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
They're just weird. But yeah, she disappeared when your mum and I were living in Northcote, renting a house in Northcote, and, and she disappeared, and we could not find her anywhere and went outside in the evening about 8:00 at night, and just heard her crying and thought she's caught somewhere. Where is she?

Pete:
Track her down.

Ian:
Yeah. Turned out she was trapped in the garage behind the house next door. So I had to go and knock on the door and and. And the the parents didn't speak English. The two, they had two young teenage girls.

Pete:
Having to, like pantomime.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly. And they thought it was hysterical. The girls. So they went and they just went out, opened the door and this black flash just went over the fence, went back inside. Just didn't want to see us. Completely panic stricken.

Pete:
What? How did you end up with your first cats, Micky and Mandy? Right. Because you guys, you had another cat before that.

Ian:
We had Muffin before that.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
She, she adopted us. She was just a wild cat, you know? Feral cat.

Pete:
Stray.

Ian:
Yeah. Stray in in Brunswick, where the first place we were living and she just walked into our kitchen door. We had the back door open one day.

Pete:
This is my house!

Ian:
Walked in and said, Hello! Oh, hello.

Pete:
Nice place you got here!

Ian:
She didn't have a collar or whatever and thought, oh, well, you know. And she just wandered off. We didn't. Yeah. I'm not going to start feeding somebody somebody else's cat or even a stray.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But then she just kept doing it. She'd come and knock on our door and we'd let her in and...

Pete:
Give her attention.

Ian:
And give her attention. And then we looked at her and went, mhm. Yeah, fleas and lice and whatever.

Pete:
It's probably not someone's pet.

Ian:
Probably not somebody's pet. Took her down the vet, she wasn't tagged...

Pete:
Chipped or anything. Yeah.

Ian:
So once we'd spent money on her, she sort of became ours. And then of course, she got pregnant and, and had.

Pete:
As they do.

Ian:
As they do. And had kittens.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And she had them in our, you know, back shed in an old the fridge, the box, the fridge came in. She climbed in there and had them. And then we thought she's, she's never going to get out of this thing. So we had to actually cut a hole in the side of the box.

Pete:
A little opening and...

Ian:
A little door in the side to let her in and out.

Pete:
Yeah.

Pete:
And then after a couple of weeks, she was gone and the kittens were gone. Three of them. And your mother...

Pete:
I thought at the time I...

Ian:
Was devastated. She's just gone. Oh, bugger. You know, these are our little kittens. We we weren't handling or anything. We were just. You'd hear them and see them in the box and things and, and, um, and then three weeks later, she just brought them back and dumped them on our back step. So I've had them for five weeks. They're now yours.

Pete:
And so was that Mickey and Mandy or was that just one of them or.

Ian:
That was Mandy. Mandy was the yeah, the, the black one out of that litter. We had two tortoiseshells and a black. We kept the black one. Your aunt got one and friends got the other one. And, so that was. Yeah, that was our second cat, Mandy. And so we, yeah, once, once we had spent more money on them getting them fleed and deloused and everything else and thought, well, they're now ours, so. And we went around to all the neighbours and asking about the original cat muffin, and I said, you know, is this yours? No, but see her around a lot, but no, she's not ours.

Pete:
So what happened to Muffin in the end? I don't think she got.

Ian:
She got run over on the road.

Pete:
Oh, really?

Ian:
Yeah. Because again, with your mother and I being out all day.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
At university.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
We were living in North Balwyn at the time, and the woman across the road used to feed her. Shake your head, you know, but, so she was, she was constantly crossing the road. And, and she got knocked over on the road, and died and then about a month later, so did Mandy, she got hit on the road.

Pete:
Yeah. She wasn't quite right.

Ian:
No, no.

Pete:
She was this brain damaged cat...

Ian:
Brain damaged cat. But yeah, we, we probably spent way more money than we should have. Yeah. Hindsight being what it is. But yeah, she had a broken jaw and a broken.

Pete:
Oh my god.

Ian:
Yeah. Broken shoulder. And, you know, we, you know, she got surgery on the jaw and the shoulder was, was in the end okay.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And I, I spent weeks doing physiotherapy on her shoulder with her and she hated it. But you know, just doing that, getting the movement back into it, and massaging it, and.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, and then we got Mickey, the little tortoise shell, that she hated, absolutely hated, hated it, hated it. The worst thing you could ever do. We had a, an old...

Pete:
You. Traded.

Ian:
I know we had our television.

Pete:
How could you?

Ian:
We, we had it sitting in an old television cabinet back in the back in the 50s when television's first came in, they were mounted in these beautiful furniture. You know, timber cabinets. With the speakers at the bottom.

Pete:
You didn't have a remote. You had to go up and twist.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
And everything...

Ian:
And the we used to use that as our TV cabinet, and put the television in it. But of course the speaker case at the bottom was empty.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, so, Mandy would sit behind the speaker holes, which just had a sort of mesh fabric over the front of it so you couldn't see her. And every time the kitten danced around past, you hear this under the television.

Pete:
It's so funny how you never know what's gonna happen. I've told this story before, I think on the podcast with Peaches and Scrappy. Peaches was a bitch like, we got her. I-.

Ian:
You hear that, Peachy?

Pete:
Yeah, she's over there.

Ian:
Somewhere in the other room.

Pete:
Yeah. So I got into plants a few years ago after Covid or during Covid, and I wanted a cat that wasn't going to eat up all the plants and be a pest. And so instead of getting a kitten.

Ian:
Got an adult cat.

Pete:
Got sort of an adult one and she was gonna sort of mind her own business. And she was, she was sort of nice, but she's always been very kind of like.

Ian:
She's just narky.

Pete:
I don't like being too close. I don't like being held. I don't like being picked up. I like your pets from a, you know, a distance. She likes being in control. And she would be. Yeah, I would have her in the, cat stand thing that she sits on top of near me when I was doing videos for the plant sort of stuff on my plant channel on YouTube. And every time my hand went near her, she'd fang me.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
She'd, you know, bite it not nastily, but like in a playful kind of you and. Yeah, well, just she was just very rough.

Ian:
Excuse me.

Pete:
She liked just just. Yeah, fanging me. She never really, really hurt you. Scratched you. But she would just fang you. Anyway, so we got Scrappy because my, my kids wanted a kitten and I thought, oh, fuck it, we'll get a small cat for them to grow up with.

Ian:
And that interact for Peaches to eat.

Pete:
Yeah. And I thought peaches is going to be so pissed off because knowing these stories about like Mandy and being angry at, are you bringing home Mickey? I'm like, she's gonna be pissed. She's gonna be angry. She's gonna be she's gonna treat this kitten so badly. And I remember, I think for the first day I me being me, I'm pretty impatient. So I was kind of like, ah, fuck it, let's just introduce them. And she reacted completely differently from what I was expecting. She. Her eyes widened and she was more curious than Scrappy was.

Ian:
You brought me a toy?

Pete:
And she. She only hissed once, and after that they were best buds. It took one day to acclimate them, and they were hanging out after that, and I could trust them on their own.

Ian:
Well, it was like when...

Pete:
And she stopped fanging me!

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
She no longer did that anymore, so I would put my hand near her and it was like she had another cat that she could be rough with and get that out of her system and wasn't doing it with me. And so her personality changed overnight. It was very bizarre.

Ian:
Yeah. It was like your cat Merlin when we got the little kitten Max, after him. Who, the tiniest little kitten. He fitted in my hand from his nose to the end of his tail. He fitted in my hand.

Pete:
Tell the story of where he came from.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
He's another one of these adoptions!

Ian:
Another one of these adoptions. He was a wild born kitten at Deakin University where your mum was working at the time. And...

Pete:
It was similar to the Muffin story, right. Where this other female cat had been getting fed there.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly. And she ended up having kittens underneath the building that your mum was working in. And then people realised it and then started to catch them.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And with this story went on for about two weeks of well, we caught the mother and, and we and we caught two of the babies and there's but there's one left.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And um, and...

Pete:
I think at the time you were like, no.

Ian:
Well Jo came home.

Pete:
No!

Ian:
She came home and said, look, if we catch this last little kitten, can we keep. And I said, absolutely not. Next day I get home.

Pete:
I don't know what happened!

Ian:
I don't know what happened!

Pete:
It just appeared!

Ian:
There's a box! And she says, I've been...

Pete:
It seems like the postman arrived.

Ian:
I've been to the vet.

Pete:
She wouldn't tell you I brought the cat.

Ian:
I've already. I've already spent money on it.

Pete:
Too late. It's registered in our name.

Ian:
Tiny little. He was the runt of the litter and he was obviously the most scared one. He was impossible to catch, but eventually they got him. And, she brought him home. We opened the box. And Merlin, this Burmese, your thing. He was about a year old at the time.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And he just looked at it and went, you brought me a pet! Instantly. And within five minutes they were grappling, rolling around on, rolling down the stairs, holding on to each other. It was his best buds.

Pete:
Just clicked.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
It was funny because I feel like I remember you became Max's best bud as well.

Ian:
Oh yeah.

Pete:
Max bonded with him.

Ian:
Max would just sit on my lap.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
He wouldn't sit on anybody else's lap. He'd just come and sit on me. And. Or he said on the arm he got, he was huge.

Pete:
Yeah, he was the biggest. He was the biggest. Huge paws that he could open up. He wasn't fat, right.

Ian:
He weighed about six kilos. But he wasn't fat.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
He was, he he would stand in our kitchen. He would stand on his back, on his back legs, put his front paws over the, over the...

Pete:
The bench.

Ian:
And look over it going, what have you got for me? He was a monster!

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But yeah, he got to the point where he wouldn't sit on my lap. He would just sit on the arm of the chair next to me.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And I'd use him as the armrest...

Pete:
Doctor Evil or whatever it is.

Ian:
Exactly, exactly.

Pete:
Yes! Yeah. Peaches does that with me every night when I'm having calls. Yeah. So if I ever have lessons with you guys, you won't be able to see it. But probably to the, to the left of the screen, there'll be a cat or a cat. Yeah. Yeah. So how much do you feel like, pet ownership has changed in your lifetime in Australia? Have there been big changes?

Ian:
Well, they keep dogs and cats in your own yard. Well, most people still don't keep their cats in their yard. But now there's this big movement to keep cats indoors, which I agree with.

Pete:
People will probably be thinking, especially if they live overseas. Why?

Ian:
Yeah, why? Well, well firstly, well take the dogs one to start with, keeping your dogs in your own yard makes sense. Yeah. You know, because dogs are aggressive and they can be annoying. They're crapping on people's gardens and, you know, whatever. So keep your dog in your own yard. You can't keep a cat in a yard, you know.

Pete:
Unless you can fence it off.

Ian:
Well, there are there are, there are, there are cat tops that you can put on fences that have rollers on them.

Pete:
I saw something the other day.

Ian:
And cats work out how to get over them.

Pete:
You can buy mesh that connects all around your house's gutter, and then you can attach it to the fence all the way around your house so that the cats can't get out. And I'm like, who the fuck is doing that?

Ian:
I know, I know.

Pete:
What an eyesore!

Ian:
Thousands of dollars...

Pete:
No birds will ever come into your yard again.

Ian:
So. Well, that's the other thing with, you know, with cats is that they're, they're really efficient hunters. And so they're out eating wildlife, you know, lizards and birds. And.

Pete:
Yeah. I realised too, because I've been one of those people that now lurks in the community Facebook groups and makes complaints about...

Ian:
Good luck! Good luck with that.

Pete:
Yeah, it's fun. But I, we have like 5 or 6 different cats that...

Ian:
Community complaints department.

Pete:
Walk past my window here. I've got a fence, the fence is right near the window and I have all these photos...

Ian:
Normally, and you will, if you listen to these a lot, you'll hear every now and then me going, there's another cat walking along the fence.

Pete:
Or the roof of the house next door, but. So I take photos and then I'll anonymously because I'm a pussy, I'll put them up because otherwise you get torn. A new one.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I put up the, the images of the cat and be like, can you guys please keep these inside? Like, for fuck's sake. I'm sick of this. And there's just fights on top of the roof.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And I realised I, what did I do? I took a photo. There was two cats sleeping underneath the, or in where we keep the guinea pigs out there in our back yard. And I took a photo and being like, can you guys take these? Can you take them home? And all these people cut your grass, mate. Cut your grass. You need to cut your grass. That's what's bringing them over. And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? What the fuck are you talking about? And then I realised I went out and mowed the lawn. There were feathers all in little areas in the grass. And the cats had been hunting.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
The stupid doves that we have nearby. Exactly. And I was like, okay, I guess you got a point. Mow the grass. And they haven't been around in the garden the same way since so. Yeah. Thank you, kind stranger. Anyway. All right. Well, we should probably finish up. We've been going for about an hour, have we? Yeah. What about some rapid fire questions?

Ian:
Go for it.

Pete:
All right. Dog, cat, or something completely different?

Ian:
Cat.

Pete:
Okay. Didn't even have to think. Best pet name in the family?

Ian:
Smudge.

Pete:
Smudge. That was the only one we had...

Ian:
The only cat that we've ever had that hasn't had a name starting with an M.

Pete:
I was going to say. So you've always had these? Yeah. So...

Ian:
Ever since we got Muffin...

Pete:
So, Mandy. Mickey.

Ian:
Muffin. Milly-Molly-Mandy with the three kittens.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Mickey. Merlin.

Pete:
Matilda.

Ian:
Matilda.

Pete:
Yeah. And then you've got McKenzie now.

Ian:
And we had Macy and we had Smudge, and now we've got McKenzie.

Pete:
So yeah. There you go. Yeah. You have Macy as well. All right. Which pet was the most spoilt?

Ian:
Merlin.

Pete:
Which one was the biggest escape artist?

Ian:
Merlin.

Pete:
Pet on the bed?

Ian:
All of them. You know, cats. No dog on the bed.

Pete:
No. Who was worse at cleaning up after the pets?

Ian:
You.

Pete:
Which pet would you trust to guard the house?

Ian:
None.

Pete:
Which pet would you never trust near your dinner?

Ian:
Uh...

Pete:
Max.

Ian:
Max.

Pete:
He would always get into it. What have you got there? Got any carbs? Any bread?

Ian:
Well, actually, Merlin was this, the bread. The carb stealer. Max was funny. Max would get into everything, but he only ever ate dry cat food.

Pete:
Didn't he go through the whole thing that time...

Ian:
You could give him any other sort of food? He would. He would steal stuff off the plate in the sink, but he wouldn't eat it.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And yeah, we he, he broke it. He broke it. This cat, he was the big dumb ox. But because he was big and strong.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
He broke into the, or we affectionately called the toilet cupboard. We turned when we did a bathroom renovation. Moved the toilet into the bathroom.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And the room. The toilet room. We made a walk in cupboard.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Sort of, you know, just a storeroom. And, we had the pet food in there, but the doors just closed. They don't have latches. They just got the their automatic-close things on them.

Pete:
You just open them up...

Ian:
And he worked out how to open them and he broke into it. He tore open the cat food and we got home and there was just.

Pete:
Piles of vomit..

Ian:
Piles of vomit, and half a thing of cat food missing.

Pete:
I love how he kept eating.

Ian:
He would just keep eating.

Pete:
Vomited up, and then he'd be like, you know what I feel? You know what I feel like right now? Filling my stomach again? He's like, I just imagine coming home and seeing..

Ian:
It was ridiculous.

Pete:
Like out of it. Just so tired from all the eating and vomiting and then just being like, worth it.

Ian:
But Merlin, Merlin, your your Burmese, he was the food stealer.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Jo, your mum, would get home from work and often she would buy a, you know, a muffin or a cake or.

Pete:
Pastry or something from..

Ian:
For lunch. Right. And have half of it and bring half of it home.

Pete:
Rolled it up and leave it in her bag.

Ian:
And he would, he'd be head and front paws into the bag, ripping things open to find this. And he fought me one day for a crust of toast. He was up on the chair next to me, which he used to do. I don't particularly like cats on the table, but you can't stop them when you're not there. But when you're there. No. Well they do. They learn that you can't do it when you're not there. But he would. He would sit on the chair next to me and. And he just put his paw up and grabbed a piece of toast, a crust off my plate. And I tried to take it back for him, and he growled at me and [ian making cat sounds], It was mine!

Pete:
Back off! That's what Scrappy's always after bread as well. Apparently it's yeast.

Ian:
Yeah, but.

Pete:
They love...

Ian:
He's the only cat that ever did it.

Pete:
Yeah. Scrappy gets in and he takes a bite. The annoying thing is, he doesn't just steal one piece of bread out of the packet.

Ian:
Oh, no...

Pete:
Just take bites all along it and you're like, well, now I've got to throw it all out. I don't want your cat saliva on my toast. Like. Oh. Anyway, last one is, which family pet would you bring back for a day?

Ian:
Oh, which one? Well.

Pete:
Jasper.

Ian:
Kenny.

Pete:
You reckon? Kenny? The snake?

Ian:
Kenny the snake.

Pete:
Really? Out of everything?

Ian:
Yeah, well, you know, he was the only snake we ever had.

Pete:
Yeah, okay.

Ian:
We've had multiple fish, turtles, lizards, cats, dogs. But he's the only snake we've ever had.

Pete:
I'd bring Jasper back. He was one of your black Labradors.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Give him a hug. He was a very friendly guy. Bang. Yeah, I remember that. I taught him that.

Ian:
You taught him that.

Pete:
I taught him to drop dead. And whenever I said bang! And then I would say, come alive!

Ian:
And he would leap up.

Pete:
He was great. All right, well, that's probably enough for today, guys. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.

Ian:
Stay tuned for the next exciting episode.

Pete:
Tell us if you're enjoying these episodes. I hope you're liking them.

Ian:
Full of shit. Stop it.

Pete:
See you guys!