Pet problems

We've had a number of pets in the course of my life:

1) Goldfish that my sister and I won at a birthday party in Washington. We brought them home in a plastic bag, and for lack of a fish tank we put them in a metal bowl. It must have had a negative effect on their sanity, because soon after my mother had bought an incredibly fancy aquarium, Jacob, the largest of the fish (and mine) bit the tail fins off all the other ones, and they died. I wanted to flush him down the toilet, but we released him into the Potomac River instead. I secretly hoped he would be eaten by a large mean predator.

2) A turtle "shell" that we found on a tennis court, and which suddenly came to life on the ride home. We kept "Snappy" until she started eating my mom's flowers, and then returned her to where we had found her. I had secretly hoped to be able to keep her over winter, because you have to put those animals into the fridge so that they can hibernate. Who would want to miss that??

3) Several rabbits that my parents bought for us at the Budapest market. They came with a bag of food and were meant to be slaughtered for Easter. We gave the bunnies away to a farmer each winter and got one of their children the next spring. Years went by before our parents told us that they actually were slaughtered by those farmers and they just bought new ones for us each year. That was a worse trauma than finding out about the Easter Bunny.

4) Parakeets. We got two and called them Max and Moritz. Moritz didn't make it past the winter, so we got Max a beautiful yellow lady called Citronella for company. We had to leave them in Hungary for quarantine reasons, and I believe they lived happily ever after and hatched many eggs.

Anyway. Today I had to face the facts: I am not a cat person. I mean, Biggins and I did have a short bonding moment during Seinfeld tonight when he climbed onto my lap and started purring. But stepping on their squeaky toy mice scares the living hell out of me, and I am already royally sick of cleaning litter boxes and removing cat hair from the bathtub, keyboard, my clothes, my bed... everywhere.
Feline fans, I am sorry - but this is not for me.