Every pet is different, with individual personalities and traits. Each pet owner treats their relationship with their animal differently.
Freshman Emily Grace has owned Tris and Izzy, two guinea pigs, for around two years.
“We found someone who couldn’t keep them anymore because their son was allergic to the food, so we bought them,” Grace said.
Within the two years that Grace has owned her guinea pigs, she has taught them many different skills.
“They’re pretty smart,” Grace said.“I’ve taught them commands like for going upstairs, and they listen like they know exactly what you’re saying.”
Grace doesn’t have any other pets, but hopes to get more guinea pigs in the future.
“I think people should own guinea pigs because they’re happy and they make me happy,” Grace said.
Unlike Grace, sophomore Lewis Horne owns four different kinds of pets.
“I have two lizards, a chameleon and a leopard gecko,” Horne said. “I also have two dogs, a rabbit, a hermit crab and a few fish,” Horne said.
Horne takes care of all of the animals himself, except for his dogs. His favorite is his rabbit, but Horne likes all of his pets because he feels that their diversity makes them unique.
“I think having interesting pets is cool because they’re all so different and they all have individual personalities,” Horne said.
Happy and Tweety are two cockatiels, and their owner, freshman Kathryn Dela Cruz, only happened upon Tweety by coincidence.
“We found Tweety in my backyard, and since he’s a cockatiel, we knew he was a domesticated bird,” Dela Cruz said. “I was walking home from the bus stop and I saw him on the street. He flew up and onto the telephone wire so I left him there. A couple hours later we found him standing in my backyard. He seemed somewhat shy and maybe a bit scared but he let us hold him. We caught him gently and brought him inside.”
She got her second bird, Happy, because she did not want Tweety to be lonely.
“Sometimes they cuddle and it’s so cute,” Dela Cruz said.
Like Grace and her guinea pigs, Dela Cruz has taught her cockatiels tricks. In this case, Happy and Tweety can whistle. She hopes to get more birds in the future because of their personalities.
“Cockatiels are really pretty, nice and you can teach them to whistle songs,” Dela Cruz said. “I love Happy so much, like when he crawls onto my fingers. He’s adorable.”
Sophomore Samantha Eastman rescued her pets. She currently fosters four cats, all of which her family saved from abandonment.
“There’s Pink Face, Tigger, Big Boy and Scaredy,” Eastman said. “We’ve been fostering them for a couple years. These neighbors that we had across the street had to leave because they weren’t paying rent, so they got up in the middle of the night and they left all of these cats.”
After they began to feed the cats and gain their trust, Eastman’s family found homes for most of them.
“We started feeding them and at one point there were like 50 cats,” Eastman said. “We fostered them out and brought them to shelters.”
The four cats that Eastman fosters have slowly learned to trust her and her family.
“Since they know us they’ll come in and we’ll pet them and they’ll sit on our laps,” Eastman said. “They’re just really nice cats.”