How old were you when you got your first pet?

The first pet that we had that was actually counted as being mine was a stray cat that followed us home one night. When I was little, my mom and I would go for walks at nite after she closed up the store where she worked. One nite, we were walking back home, and a grey kitty came out from an alley and started following us home, meowing all the way. Mom tried to shoo her away, but she just kept following us anyway. Apparently, she had just been dumped, because she was very hungry, and happy to be fed when we got back home to the house. Mom let me keep her, and we had her for years and years . She used to have kittens every now and then, and we had to find homes for the kittens.
I was an only child, so Sambo was a great playmate, and I used to dress her up in my dolls clothes, which she never seemed to mind.