Welcome from Texas! You will love this board. I love, love, love my fur babies. I have six cats and a chihuahua and stray cats outside that I feed. All of my cats are strays that adopted me. One of the strays was pregnant when she adopted me and she had four out of five kittens that lived. I rescued my chihuahua from the animal shelter and the outside stray cats are all "fixed" (thank heavens for low-cost spay and neuter clinics) except my neighbor's cat and if I could, I would have him fixed. I know what you mean about the pets ruling the roost because ours does, but I love them all and I think life would not be complete without a pet to love.