In 1987 we were in America. I was very young so I can't remember much. We had a dog and we named her Marathon. She was black, grey, brown and white. The white was as white as snow. She was a stray dog and we took her in because she kept coming to our house begging for food. She loved it in the winter because we had a slope in our garden and we had sleds. When we went down the hill Marathon would follow. Sometimes we even took her with us on the sled. She had a brilliant time in America. Because we moved to England we had to give Marathon to our grandparents otherwise we would have had to put her in a cage for two months. She still lives at my grandparents' house.

In 1969 when we were in England we got a kitten. We named him Copper because his coat was the colour of copper but his stomach was white. His fur was as sott as the fluff on a chick. We got him at a shopping center. My Dad and I were shopping. and we saw a litter of kittens. We begged him to buy one and he did. For the journey ! home we put him in a cardboard box. In the car he kept climbing out of the box. We got him home and as soon as we put him on the floor he started jumping onto the table and kept on knocking things over. Copper's favourite place was on the roof of the garden shed.

We moved to Athens, Greece and this time we kept Copper. He did not bite or scratch like other cats. He always used to sleep on our beds.. There were a lot of olive trees in front of the house and Copper loved the olives that had fallen to the ground. The road in front of our house was very busy and as you know cats love to wander about at night. One night Copper jumped over the garden wall and crossed the road. A car was coming but Copper did not hear or see the car and the next minute Copper was lifeless and flat. The next day my dad saw Copper on the road and he buried Copper in the woods on the other side of the road.

Still in Greece we went to a party and before we left we each got a goldfish. ~ Copper was still around at the time we had to put them out of the cat's reach. They were each in their own bowl. One of the goldfish jumped out of the bowl at night and we found it all dried up. The goldfish were all orange.We moved to the Netherlands so we had to give the fish to a friend of Mum's because we couldn't put them on the plane.

When we moved to the Netherlands in 1993 my uncle gave us one guinea pig. We called her "Yassu" which means "hello" in Greek. Yassu was brown with a few black, white and yellow-browning hairs. As Yassu was lonely we bought another one. The second one was called "Yassas" which means "hi" in Greek. She was white and black with a few copper hairs. Then we bought two hamsters and we couldn't look after the four of them so we gave the Guinea-pigs to our uncle

In the summer of 1996 my mum, sister and I bought two dwarf hamsters They are grey and white tand they have a black stripe down their backs. They lso have a pink nose. My hamster is called Salty and my sister's is called Bubblebick. My hamster is fat --she wieghs 70 grams. My sister's is thin --she weighs 5 grams. They are still living in their cage stuffing themselves with grains on the landing just outside my bedroom.

I think it wasn't fair to the guinea pigs but at least they live happily now. It's a shame about Copper's death but then everything has to die. We have had the hamsters for one year. Normally they live two years but I hope ours live longer.