Very Nearly Literally a Zoo

My house really is a zoo.  We have ten dogs and five birds.  Two of the birds, cockatiels named Beauty and Archie (short for Archimedes) and two of the dogs, a poodle puppy and a half poodle half Maltese puppy, are mine.  Beauty has a congenital liver disorder, and has been clinging to life for the past five years.  She has been my baby ever since she curled up against my chest and fell asleep.  Back then, she was a three month old chick who looked perfectly healthy, though the lady we bought her from warned us that it wasn’t normal for her to do that.  The vet says it’s a miracle she has lived as long as she has, and even though she has no feathers left on her wings and head, she shows no signs of giving up anytime soon.  She has quite the temper, my little Beauty, and when something isn’t right, she lets me know.

Fish: Beauty is pissed at me because Mom covered her before I got her out so I had to uncover her and wake her up.  She told me off.  My cockatiel told me off.
Cat: You have been pwned by a neurotic ball of fluff.

The puppies are a relatively new addition to the house.  I adopted them from a lap dog rescue, and I had wanted a poodle for years.  I had one named Lucky, and he was as smart as a dog could be.  The puppies are the same way.  Anyway, I had very definitive ideas as to what I wanted to name the first puppy, the poodle.  So did my mother.  I wanted to name him Siegfried after James Harriet’s boss, and because poodles are German dogs (no, not French, they’re German water retrievers)

Mom: You should name your puppy Sirius!
Fish: Err, no, Mom, I want to name him Siegfried.
Mom: you're naming him after Woton's bastard grandchild by incest who sleeps with his aunt?
Fish: Yep
Mom: You could call him “Siri”
Fish: Siegfried Woton.

I call him Ziggy for short.

I rescued the second puppy, the half Maltese half poodle, because we wanted Ziggy to stop tormenting Liam, our half Maltese half Yorkie.  Mom named him in the vain hope that he might be sweet.  He isn’t sweet.  He bites Zig every time Zig tries to play with him.  I wanted to name the new one Tristan, after Siegfried’s brother, and Mom wanted to name him Remus, or Zagnut, because then we could call him Zag.

Mom: You can’t name him Tristan, it means “sad”
Fish: But Siegfried’s brother!
Mom: their parents should have had their Wagner LPs destroyed for the sake of all mankind!
Fish: you realize those weren’t their real names, right?

So I decided to name him after a German or Austrian musician.  His name is Johan, after Johan Sebastian Bach, and he’s Yo-yo for short.

I've decided that Freud had no hope, having been named after a guy who pulled his daddy's sword out of a tree and had a baby with his twin.  Did you know that before he invented psychoanalysis, he spent a month dissecting eels trying to find their testicles?