Animals 1 - 4 (Page 1)

Originally belonging to a young boy, Abby was kept in a small back yard with ducks, chickens and rabbits. She was fed chicken scratch and not given much attention. The owners agreed to let us take her into rescue. She wasn't very friendly at first, but has warmed up nicely to us. Abby has tons of personality and is usually the pig that visitors remember most.

If Cathy has a special pig, that would have to be Arnold. He doesn't like anyone else in the barnyard talking to her, and particularly does not like children. He will gladly chase them right out of his space. In the morning, while Cathy gets the breakfast ready for the pigs, Arnold has his snout right up against her leg, wanting to know where she is at all times, or maybe he just wants her to hurry up.

Arnold had a cancerous ulcerated tumor removed October 7th this year that turned out to be malignant. The cancer was very aggressive and tumors reappeared in five weeks. This time they multiplied rapidly and within a week were everywhere. We said good bye to him and helped him cross the bridge because we didn’t want his last days to be painful. He had lots of good treats and belly rubs during his last week. Cathy misses him terribly.

Arnold's smaller sister Babe is as sweet as she is cute. Both she and Arnold were bottle-fed along with Buttons and another piglet named Prince. When they were babies, as soon as they heard the microwave signaling a bottle being warmed, they would squeal and run around the kitchen until Cathy said, "Go get on your rug." Then they would run to the rug and wait in a row for the warm milk. These babies spent the first few weeks in the lab at Evergreen Valley College with Cathy, the students taking turns feeding them. The piglets learned to be very social with all kinds of people. Babe is just as sweet today as she was then.

Babe got the same cancer Arnold had one month after Arnold died and she passed away soon after. She is missed very much.

Bessie is one big girl! We suspect she has some "hog" in her. Being big just means there is more to love; she is such a sweetheart! She loves to get into things, and, being she is so large, dumping over garbage cans and such is not a problem for her. Her favorite trick is to reach up as high as she can and pull down branches of the fig tree, letting them snap back up to drop the figs on the ground so she can eat them.

A couple of months ago, Bessie seemed to have a blockage, so we called Dr. Meyers out. He gave her some mineral oil down a tube in her throat to get it in her system quickly. The oil did the trick, but Bessie stopped eating. We instituted the “Bessie Buffet.” We tried scrambled eggs, baked potatoes with butter and sour cream, soups, pastas, squash, and a dozen other things. Sometimes she would eat it, or a little, and sometimes not at all. We watched her go downhill for weeks while we played hit or miss with her meals. Finally we had to say good bye. We never found out what was really wrong with her, although we had Dr. Meyers out several time. She is really missed by us. Hannah and Leroy used to high-tail it to her pen in the morning to clean up whatever was on the buffet menu that day. They miss that a lot too.