People keep all kinds of pets these days.  When you work in their homes you have to be prepared for just about any kind of pet.  I have seen rats, birds, dogs, cats, reptiles, and I have heard of others.

The wildest one I ever saw was a pig.

One of the jobs I was on was at the home of a lady who lived alone but had a pig for a pet.  The pig had its own room.  It was not a little pig, but a full sized pig.  The room was not just a little place, but a full sized bedroom.

The lady had a garden gate attached to the door of the bedroom and a crib sized bed with a mattress for the pig to sleep on.  I wondered why the place didn’t smell like a barn.

Twice a day she would take the pig out in the back yard to eliminate waste.  Pigs can be quite clean animals.  Part of my work was in the pig’s bedroom.  I was pretty cautious as I knew that pigs’ appetites could include human flesh and bone.

The lady had to go downtown for something while we were there.  When she came back she stepped in the door and said; “Oh my goodness!  Has he been a naughty boy?”  She immediately sent the pig outside and began to clean the pigsty (whoops – pig’s bedroom).

I have had pets myself, but usually I kept them outside, except for one cat.  When my wife and I were first married we bought a small mobile home.  Since we had mice in the home we kept a cat inside.  It was a two room mobile home – a bedroom and a kitchen/living room area.  No bathroom.

In the middle of the night I heard a ruckus.  I told my wife; “Oh boy!  He caught it.”  I jumped up and ran into the living area.  A mouse ran across the floor in front of me.  The front door was wide open and the cat was gone.

Apparently he had been so frightened at the sight of the mouse that he opened the door and scrammed.

Now we keep our pets outside in a doghouse or barn.