@Former-Member, I just love the picture of your adorable little Evie. Just beautiful. And you're right our pets do offer so much comfort to us.
@outlander, the red panda is quite unique arent they. Yes Holly is a mini foxy cross. She has some chihauha (never can spell that word dammit) in her as well as the foxy. There is another breed which looks very similar to a Mini Foxy and that is the Tenterfield Terrier. The brown and white dog you had sounds more like a Jack Russell. They are usually brown and white where as the Mini Foxy and Tenterfield are black and white. All great little farm dogs, good hunters of rodents and rabbits.
Yes I am a farm girl from way back. Born on a remote farm, and spent all my school days living on a farm and taking a daily bus ride of an hour and a half to school every week day. I remember running the 500mtrs of so from our house down to the road to catch the bus at 7.10am each day. Then arriving at school just in time for the first class. Long days. Most of my younger life my dad worked for farmers and we lived on their farms. Mostly fine wool sheep and some cattle and cropping. But the owners always let me and my older sister use their stock horses, because they needed the work. So that was nice. When I was about 12 I think, my sister and I had saved up enough to buy our own pony. Called her Flicka. You may be too young to remember a book called "My friend Flicka". I think there was a move and a TV series as well. Anyway the owner of the farm allowed us to have the pony there which was good. Flicka was fabulous, my best friend at the time. I would wander off into the big paddock and just sit and gaze at her lovingly. She was a beaut little pony too, she was unbroken when we got her as a 12 months old. So we had to break her in ourselves.
Yes Meercats are cute. I have seen them in a zoo too, but also have seen some wildlife programs on TV which feature them. Meercat Manor its called. Have you seen it? I have seen baby meercats at the zoo I visited. I also have a calendar hanging on our kitchen wall which has a meercat for each month. They are so gorgeous.
Sherry