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Pet-icular kind of love | Four felines purring, three dachies dashing and a springer spaniel named Remy
Kialla West’s Clarke household resembles somewhat of a zoo for domestic animals with four dogs and four cats circling the ankles of the human residents they outnumber.
Eighteen-year-old Brooklyn Clarke introduced me to the family’s eight pets, explaining that most of them are her responsibility because she’s the one who keeps bringing them home.
She’s a veterinary nurse trainee between jobs and looking for a new clinic to take her on.
Seeing her devotion to her four-legged friends it’s no surprise she was drawn to the industry.
Luckily, all the other humans in the house — her mum, dad and brothers — are animal lovers, too.
Now, stick with me and see if you can keep up.
There are three miniature dachshunds among the menagerie of pets, including Arlo, 6, Aster, 4, and Lola, nine months, all with vastly different personalities, one of them (Arlo) even possessing a few different ones in his tiny head alone.
The fourth dog, Remy, is an English springer spaniel around 14 years old, who doesn’t get quite as animated as regularly as the dachies, but will perform spins inside if he’s unaccompanied by the other canines.
Three cats — Milo, 3, Leo, 1, and Ollie, 12 weeks — live inside.
One hardened farm cat with street smarts whose name suggests otherwise — Princess — no longer enjoys being inside after a medical episode when she was younger.
Now seven, the white chinchilla had a seizure when she was two, which caused a little brain damage and left her with a kinked neck and an overgrooming habit.
Brooklyn said she was happy enough hanging out in the front garden.
Surprisingly, given dogs and cats are often one another’s arch nemeses, the rest of them get along well, for the most part.
And Brooklyn says she’s their favourite human.
“Because I’m nice to them all,” she said.
“Unlike my brothers, who like to stir them up.”
She said the pets followed her everywhere, even when she went to the toilet.
Just that morning, she had gotten out of the shower and three of them were amusingly waiting for her at the bathroom door.
Arlo, the oldest of the dachies, is quite the clown.
As Brooklyn told stories of how he likes to suck, not bite, his favourite blanket and dive into the swimming pool at random, even when no-one else is swimming, I watched him crunch once on a large huntsman before rolling in it and then repeating several times.
Brooklyn said he had “gone nuts” since being desexed; bombarding everyone, licking the windows when he could see people (and cats) inside and climbing on to the outdoor table.
Despite the character-filled canine’s many quirks, he’s reportedly too old a dog (at six) to learn new tricks like his kennel mates still do.
Aster — Brooklyn’s brother’s dog — is a dapple dachshund.
He hated my camera and, therefore, wasn’t too much of a fan of me, so he didn’t perform any said tricks during my visit, rather he just gave me a lot of side-eye.
He is known for duck diving into the toy basket to retrieve his ball right from the very bottom.
Brooklyn said if anyone else was up for it, Aster would be keen to play fetch for six hours straight.
The youngest of the dachies, nine-month-old Lola. She was born the day the family’s lovable Luna (also a dachshund) was sadly killed on the highway after escaping the yard.
Brooklyn says Lola only likes her boyfriend and the females in the house, but “hates every other boy”.
“They’re also not allowed to wear shirts in the pool,” Brooklyn said, explaining that she will bark at any male who does.
The black and tan pup is a sleepyhead, who often refuses to get out of her bed.
But when she does, she’s partial to carrying around 12-week-old kitten Ollie by the scruff of his neck like he’s a toy.
Ollie doesn’t mind so much. He is a rescue cat that was found on a farm, so he possibly enjoys the ‘nurturing’ motherly attention.
Leo, aged around one, is also a rescue cat.
He was found in a wall with three other kittens.
Brooklyn and her family took all four of them in and cared for them for five months before surrendering Leo’s siblings to Shepparton Animal Rescue to find new homes.
As the oldest and arguably most mature of the inside cats, three-year-old ragdoll Milo has little tolerance when the youngest cat, Ollie the 12-week-old kitten, comes too close.
They’re generally all mates, but Milo is not a fan of the younger feline chasing his elegant ‘floofy’ tail.
Dogs and cats might be the main variety of Clarke pets these days, but the family have a history of keeping many kinds, including turtles, bunnies, guinea pigs, fish, birds, lambs, ferrets and even a little runt pig.
Nobody knows what variety their next addition will be.
But there is little doubt that there will be a next.