This page is dedicated to all animals I have kept as pets over the years.   Since I grew up on a farm I managed to raise: cattle, sheep, cats, dogs, fish, ducks, spiders, insects, gerbils, snakes, etc.  Animals taught me a lot about life and death.  I respect them more than most of the idiot people I have to deal with on a daily basis.  Below are pictures of my favorite animals over the years.

Above:  "Festus the cat", was one of America's legendary cattlemen.  He worked his way from the Rio Grande all the way to Klondike boomtowns.  He was a rancher, railroad worker, miner, gambler, preacher, and occasional gunslinger.  In 1895, Festus was shot dead during a game of poker in a Leadville, Colorado saloon.  Some say it was over a woman, others claim it was vigilante justice from a failed bank robbery at Cripple Creek.

Above: One of the most feared hunters in the Midwest . . . "Patches" terrorized rats and other small mammels in what authorities remember as the bloodiest rampage in Kansas history. Body parts and carnage were found strewn from Wichita as far North as Topeka. This rare photo was taken just moments before another of his crazed attacks.