The earliest attachment that I can recollect is love of animals. I remember always having a dog from age 4 till the last year of college. At one point of time, we had four dogs in our house. I can recollect a few dog names - Jimmy, Bobby, Tony, Mickey and Fluffy. Since I was so passionate about dogs, I had the extra responsibility of feeding them and cleaning after their messiness. Also, I got in trouble for letting them sleep on my bed. The best part of raising animals is their uncanny identification of owners and their unpretentious welcome as soon as I came home from school/college. Bobby was so good that he could identify all the horn sounds of our various two and four wheeler from the end of the street and would start banging the door welcoming us home. There was also the part that he would give us a wake up call by licking us on our face.
Coincidentally, my husband loves dogs too. He raised two dogs called Jerry and Spunky. Now everybody has grown old and nobody has pet dogs anymore. I was very happy that recently my brother-in-law bought a puppy dog and named it spunky again.
Cats
And have fed many cats, some of which were very loyal and continued to come home everyday to get their share of milk. I continue the tradition in my current apartment with my son and we feed three cats everytime we see them. They know the time we come home and come out of their hiding places when they see our car driving into the parking space.
Fishes
Oh Fishes !! My brother maintained an aquarium when I was younger and I don't remember much about it. When I started working and got my first bonus, I spent it on my own aquarium setup. I researched a lot about the types of fishes, the fish tank equipment, fish food etc and setup my own little aquarium. I loved the sound of water always flowing through the water filters. I wasn't very lucky with them, since one of them had babies soon and they kept getting stuck in the filters and I had to take them out and clean them up and feed the babies separately and they didn't survive. :(
Squirrels, Chicken
Besides dogs and cats, I remember raising a few chickens when I was very young which is the reason that I have never wanted to eat a chicken till now.
Once I rescued a small squirrel that fell into our house from its nest and fed her and put her back into her nest. The baby squirrel was so tiny and the lines on the back hadn't formed yet. My grandmother came up with an idea to feed the squirrels using a cotton ball dipped in milk and squeezing it into her mouth.
Giraffes, Wild Pig, Rhino, Elephants
When I was in high school, my parents were in Africa for 4 years and I made the dream travel to Kenya, the sacred land of many animals since there are huge national forests where they roam around freely. There was a giraffe center in Nairobi where we could climb upto an elevated platform and feed giraffes ourselves. That was an awesome experience, where you get licked by giraffes. In sweetwaters land we got to pet a wild boar and a rhino. Apparently the wild boar had belonged to a hollywood actress and had posed for the pumbaa character of Lion King. The actress had donated the wild boar to the Kenyan national park. The boar was already domesticated and loved petting. He wouldn't let me get out of his enclosure, he kept coming back for more petting. :D My Dad wouldn't let me touch anything else in the jeep until I washed my hands at the end of the trip. :( The Rhino was awesome too and soooo huge, he seemed insensitive to petting and kept munching away at his food.
Lion cubs
We recently went on a cruise to mexico and they were collecting money for wildlife preservation by letting us pet baby lion cubs. They were soooo cute, they were asleep in their cribs and were just like babies. They were so soft and cuddly. The one I got to pet was called Garfield.
