Between my wife and I, we've got several pets. At the moment, there are nine. Carrie, Cadence, and Fyodor are our three cats. Cadence and Carrie were my wife's cats before we got married, and Fyodor was mine. I brought Parker, my Costa Rican Zebra tarantula, into the marriage, as well as a rabbit named Dawson. Additionally, we have three Ecuadorian land hermit crabs: Begbie, after the guy in Trainspotting, Stump, and Number Three.

Here are the pics I had handy:

Cadence

- Here's Cadence. She's kinda goofy-lookin' here - she normally looks much more refined and aloof. Judging from the mirror, there was a party going on when my wife took this picture, so she was probably kinda spooked.


Here she is again in her favourite place. She always did have a thing for sinks.

Carrie

- a.k.a. "The Little One". This cat is so easily spooked even my wife and I have to approach her very slowly to prevent her from getting up and running away. Strangely, she's one of the braver cats, and the only one so far that has ever dared to wander out of the window and onto the roof.

Fyodor

- This one was mine before we got married. He certainly has his particularities, including a mortal fear of bananas. Seriously. You can pick this cat up and try to move him closer to a bunch of bananas, and he'll freak out and claw his way out of your arms.

Dawson

- Here's Dawson, a bunny that we kind of "rescued" before we got married. At the time, my wife (then my fiance) and I had a "no more pets" embargo going. But a co-worker of mine came to me and said, "look, my friend has a bunny she can't keep, I know you like animals... wanna take 'im?" My wife and I looked at each other with that "Can I? Please?" kind of look. The rest is history.

Parker

- Here's what Parker, the tarantula, looks like, when she decides to actually crawl out from under her rock. She once pulled a Houdini on me, back when I lived alone on the third floor of a walk-up apartment. I found her a day later, halfway down the apartment's stairwell, in broad view of everyone, just sitting still with that "crap, I'm busted" look. She's awfully lucky I found her before anyone else did.

Begbie

- This is one of the three hermit crabs. We once came home from seeing a movie, and were discussing the film, paying no attention to the fact that Carrie was swatting something around on the hardwood floor (we assumed it was clothespin or something, just some small hard object she'd found). This went on for quite some time before we realized that it was, in fact, Begbie, who by this time was huddled as far back as he could get into his shell.

Stump

- This guy is so named due to the fact that he was missing a leg when I got him. I haven't really gotten to know this crab yet, but I thought I'd get his picture up here.

Number Three
a.k.a. 'Mustafa'

- This is Number Three. Got him at the same time I got Stump, and could not for the life of me come up with a good name. He would have been the third crab (after Begbie and Stump), and so in my head I just kept calling him "the third one", and eventually, "number three". Then I said it in a Dr. Evil-type voice. That's what did it. The name stuck.

Here's a good resource for hermit crabs, by the way: www.hermit-crabs.com. This is a great site, dismissing the notion that hermit crabs are cheap, short-lived, "disposable" pets. There is actually a great deal to know about them if one is to keep them as pets, and they certainly are interesting and fascinating little guys.