ANNE: Toby came to us in a dream — literally. Our 10-year-old had been begging for a corgi and I’d scoured the area for breeders, with no luck. Then one night I dreamed of a small corgi with wings floating down out of the sky. The next morning, I checked the want ads for the umpteenth time and there he was: five-month-old corgi looking for a new home. He’s been the light and life and heart of our family ever since.
HALEEMA: Zoe is why I know I’m a softie.
She breaks things, usually nice things, like pretty teacups and souvenirs. No bare ankle goes unbitten by her. Zoe figured out how to open her carrier while we were on a road trip and ran free in the car. She has followed house guests into the bathroom and hopped into the shower with them.
My cat is embarrassing. She’s somewhere between a delinquent younger sibling and the friend that actually makes your life harder, but you can’t help but be attached to them because they are still kind of endearing.
My mom says Zoe has a conduct disorder and visitors want her to stop picking at their food. I’m pretty sure I’m just a terrible disciplinarian who is too taken with my cat’s free spirit and intelligence to set completely justifiable boundaries. I wonder if I should have even named her. My cat could probably name herself. I’m afraid of parenthood. Huh? I mean my cat is also really sweet and greets me at the door and is eager to give me company. These days, I just keep a lot of superglue on hand to put my broken teacups back together, and laugh at the fact that she’s not afraid of water.
SHANNON: Bebe Queen is a beagle who is afraid of the dishwasher, ever since she tried to climb into it (to lick plates) and got stuck in the rack, pulling it out and crashing around the house attached to it.
Beagles love food more than all else, and unless it’s a mushroom, which her breed must innately disdain to avoid eating poisonous ones in the wild, she’ll eat anything. She once consumed my “I Voted” today sticker as it fell off.
Her talents include keeping the floors spotlessly clean, falling asleep with her nose up to the one sliver of sunlight in the house, and running on the beach with all four feet off the ground. She also has an unusual exercise routine of running, backtracking to sniff something, running, backtracking…you get the idea.
I once counted how many words she knows, and it’s about 40. Her favorite words are breakfast, lunch, dinner, treat, chicken and squirrel. As life gets complicated, Bebe reminds me happiness is found in the most everyday and simplest of places, if we let ourselves find it. But not inside the dishwasher.
CHARLES: Jix in Kekchi Mayan means jaguar. I don’t speak Kekchi Mayan, or any of the other dialects of Mayan for that matter. I only know this because Jix is the name of my cat. I shouldn’t say “my” so quickly. Though I am the primary person who feeds him, Jix finds his affection (known as Jixi Snuggle Time) elsewhere. See, of the four people in my house (me, my wife, teenage son, and young daughter) I am last in line on the cat’s priority list. Unfair, you say? Oh, it gets worse.
Two years ago, the three people in my family who are not me started pushing for a kitte. Hard. I played my immediate and seemingly definitive trump card: I am allergic to cats. Boom. End of discussion.
Never underestimate the power of an eight-year-old girl and her mother who want a kitten. Ever.
“The internet says some breeds are hypoallergenic” I was told. The internet! “If you can find a kitten that doesn’t make me sneeze, I am all for it.” I replied, assuming that conversation was all but over. Wrong. Welcome to special cat breed rescue world. Who knew.
Jix is now a two-year-old Bengal cat. He’s huge. He’s aggressive/violent. He’s a snuggler (when calm). He’s loud and talks too much. He fits right in. And, oh yeah, he doesn’t make me sneeze.
MARK: Our pair of Boston terriers, Mac and Bacon, basically treat us like roommates that pay the mortgage. Make no mistake—they definitely appreciate that we do that for them, and repay us with licks, often more than we care to receive. They might not bring home a paycheck (working on becoming Instagram influencers, promise!) but they contribute how they can. They both demand ample Netflix and cuddle time each evening, Mac maintains a regular yard patrol that runs approximately 22 hours a day (the yard is least safe during afternoon nap time), and Bacon makes sure that every water bowl maintains optimal fullness day and night. You know, for our benefit.
When we were moving around a lot, we worried about upsetting their routine and stressing them out—it didn't seem fair to them to upend their walk route or TV schedule for our selfish career goals. But these days we've been stressed from house projects and life in general, they go to work—nuzzling up next to us to remind us to not sweat the small things, and to focus on what matters. Like giving out pets.