My Truth

Chapter 16

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After they all left, Lucas and I started going to St. Arnaud to visit my grandparents, Howie and Craig.

Mandy was with Craig at this point and they had a house in town.

Lucy was pregnant with 8 pups when we started going around to Howies place to hang out.

After she had them, we would take all the pups plus Lucy over there still. 1 pup died and it was the only female. All the other pups were male.

Back when Leana lived with me, we had over 20 cats. 2 were mine, Allie and Pippin. Allie I've had since we had her as a kitten when I was 17. Pippin I got when I met a lady through Leana who was a cat foster carer.

The lady had over 25 ish cats that she foster. For those who don't know, when you foster a cat, you're not allowed to let them outside in case the person who adopts the cats, wants them to be inside only. The lady had made an outdoor enclosure though, so they weren't technically outside. The cats al lived inside most of the time though.

Pippin was a kitten still and he basically adopted me. He would come up to me every time I visited, so I couldn't not adopt him.

Since Leana was foster carer as well, that's how we ended up with so many cats. Most of them were mothers with kittens and nobody wanted to foster families; because of this, I got these connections as well.

When the pups grew a little more, I managed to rehome a few and then give them over to rescue members to rehome. I decided to rehome Lucy since she had way more energy than I could handle. I told the rescue people to rehome her to a family with young kids, because she would thrive so well with them. The other pups and Lucy were rehomed very quickly apparently and Lucy was rehomed with a young family from what I was told.

I kept one of the pups, Belz, because he was so chill.

I would stay with Craig and Mandy sometimes, and they had a jack russell cross named Spartan. He didn't really like people too much and he would bite people. Lucas encouraged it by kicking him every time he saw Spartan. I'm surprised neither Craig or Mandy punched him in the face for that. They also had a chuiahua cross named Missy Moo.

Once when I stayed at their house, it was just me staying there, and Spartan had become comfortable enough with me that he would sleep on my made up bed in the loungeroom and let me pat him. He is a genuine sook who loves cuddles.

Craig came and went to walk passed but smacked my butt and lay down next to me to talk to me about Spartan. I can't remember exactly, but I think it was something to the effect of Spartan finally let me touch him or something.

As for the smacking my butt part...Look man, I don't know. It made me jump, but as far as I'm aware, he didn't mean anything weird by it. Stuff like that was normal in my family; even Chris would make comments about my body, particularly my butt, so it didn't really cross my mind too think too much about it until later on.

At one point, Rob started living with Howie again, which I told him was a terrible idea. Howies place was a 2 bedroom flat, but it still wouldn't given them space from each other.

I remember 5 of us going to Bendigo to get a caravan to put in the driveway so they would have their own space. Me, Rob, Mandy, Howie and Lucas. Mandy, Rob and Howie were all drinking of course.

When we got to the place that was selling the caravan, the cops turned up just as we pulled up, and they searched the caravan, finding bags of weed.

We didn't really get questioned because we were there just for the caravan. Needless to say, we left without the caravan.