Pet Teams

A site for baseball fans and their pets

The Billy-Ball Team

                                   Mookie                              Wilson                                 Allie (hard at work)

Mookie is an 8-year old Wheaton Terrier, Wilson is a six-year old long-haired cat, and Allie is three-old, fat cat. While sometimes it does feel a little bit like a circus in this household, invariably it has been more the results of the humans than of the menagerie.

Like me, all the pets love food and we all have our cuisine eccentricities (my focus du jour). For those of you who might be planning to have me over for dinner, I am an “aquarium”; meaning I eat only fish and vegetables and fruit and just about every carbo imaginable with the exception of Bernie.

Mook and I are the only males in this household (although we’ve both been “fixed” in spite of the fact that we both insisted that nothing was “broken”) and there is quite a bit of male bonding between us. For example, we both love pizza. Being a native New Yorker, I am very selective about the pizza I eat. In this pizza-wasteland known as “Boston” I find it very difficult to find even marginally decent pizza to eat. Mookie is less choosy. He will eat any pizza he finds on any sidewalk and enjoy it immensely.

Unlike many doggies, Mook doesn’t immediately eat his food as its poured into his bowl, sometimes he won’t have his first meal of the day until evening (although he is always up for a treat). Wilson has her own set of quirks. Besides being a “freak-a-zoid” with six claws on each of her front paws, when it comes to food she’s a snacker. She rarely will sit and eat a huge meal preferring to eat a little bit of dry food when she is in the mood. The biggest problem is that these moods can, and do, occur at any time during a 24-hour period. It doesn’t matter whether it is day or night, she wants food when the mood strikes her.

That is why she taught herself how to turn on my alarm clock.

Yes, my cat knows how to operate the buttons on my alarm clock that will turn on the radio, the CD player, anything she wants to hear. If I try to ignore her, she will scratch at the books on my night table. When I attempt to swat her away from the night table, she will simply leap to the bookcase over our bed and start knocking books on my head until I get out of bed and feed her. I do get up at that point not just for my safety and my desire to resume my sleep, but out of respect to her persistence.

As I’m writing this column, just like every morning when I write Billy-Ball, Mookie is on my right either on the chair or on the floor and Allie is on my left, on the desk, between the monitor and the printer. If Allie could talk and you asked her what her philosophy of food was she would sum it up in three words, “give me food.” The cat loves to eat and like me she is…how can I say it politely…fat.

Allie is interested in cat food at anytime of the day and believes that she is insulting me if she leaves any in the bowl. She is a member of the clean plate club. She is also more than happy to clean anyone else’s plate as well. Yet, when I put food out and both cats are waiting, she will always show deference to her older sister and let Wilson eat first. Allie also, by the by, is incredibly close to Mookie. Whenever we come back from a walk, she will run from where ever she is, talking all the while, and rub up against Mook, purring with delight.

Mookie and Wilson were named for Mets’ outfielder Mookie Wilson. Mookie was once asked why he got married in a ballpark he responded, "My wife wanted a big diamond." And when asked by Billy-Ball, his ownself, about people naming their pets after him, he told me that he gets a least a letter a week with somebody naming their dog, rabbit or snake after him and it makes him feel so wonderful because a pet is such an important part of the family and it shares in the love and he is so flattered to be included in this fashion.

Allie is named after the pitcher Allie Reynolds, the Yankee pitcher who in 1951 won the Hickock Belt as the top professional athlete of the year, and in 1952 was second in the AL MVP voting, recording 20 wins and six saves, and leading the AL in both ERA (2.06) and shutouts (6). We named her Allie because the kids liked the name and because Mrs. Ball drew the line and wouldn’t let the new kitten be named “Buckner”

Monty the Magnificent, a member of Kent's family in Bellevue, Washington

Willie and Sadie (with Max), all proud members of Red Sox Nation