Doctor Do-little.

I’m very into animals.

It’s important that you don’t misinterpret the above statement. There’s nothing suspect about my interest in the Animal Kingdom; our relationship has always been strictly platonic. I do, however, function best when there are animals around.

My earliest pets were two rabbits named Sooty & Snowy. It probably doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to guess what they both looked like - though it might be best to keep your suppositions to yourself; you don’t want to be branded a rabbit racist.

Rabracist? Ra(bb)c(i)s(t)? That’s enough of that.

Sooty & Snowy were perfectly happy in the company of each other; it was only when I was added into the equation that things started to kick off. 

The trick with rabbits is to start picking them up early; if you don’t get them used to being handled from the beginning then they soon make it clear who’s boss. As a result, my rabbit-keeping days were mostly restricted to feeding blades of grass through the chicken wire on the outside of their run – or chasing them around the garden on the couple of occasions that they’d chewed their way through it.

Since then I've had numerous pets - and thankfully I'm now a lot better at knowing how to handle them. At the time of writing I have a cat and two budgies.
 
You might think that isn’t the best combination. You’re probably right. Suffice to say, we keep them apart using a strict door system akin to a submarine airlock; never the twain shall meet.

When it comes to the budgies I also have a bit of a guilty secret: despite having them for nearly five years, I’ve never actually given them names.

It's a bit like how not picking up Sooty & Snowy from the beginning led to them never being domesticated; not settling on budgie names early made it hard for anything to stick.

I toyed with the idea of Fletcher and Godber – but somehow alluding to a pair of caged birds as prison cellmates felt a little bit too negative. A friend suggested calling them Doggett & Ephgrave, but I didn't want to name a pet after myself. Besides, if one of them died it might seem a little portentous.

Also, the yellow one has a habit of hanging from his swing and wiggling his tail-feathers provocatively; I didn't want to give Glyn any big ideas.

As it is, we’ve settled for the obvious: Blue Birdie and Yellow Birdie; it seems the Sooty and Snowy motif of the late-Eighties was not an easy one to shake.  

God forbid I ever have to name any children.