As students settle into their new homes in Hillsdale, many are forced to say goodbye to parts of their homelife. While home cooked meals, family members, and childhood friends must remain at home, more and more are bringing a slice of home with them in the form of their pets.
The student’s furry friends join us from a wide variety of distances. From the local Humane Society to halfway across the country, students make the journey to campus with their pets.
“We made a ten hour drive, the two of us, from North Carolina,” senior Kirby Thigpen said of her cat, Mittens. “She took it like a champ, though. She was in the passenger seat, and she was meowing a lot, but that’s okay.”
Although Thigpen has had Mittens since her seventh birthday, this is the first year that she joins Thigpen on campus.
Senior Owen Macauley and his housemates, however, added a new member to their off campus house only a few short weeks ago after he and a few of his housemates drove to the Branch County Humane Society to look into adopting a kitten.
While the original plan was only to look around the shelter, after the group arrived they couldn’t resist bringing home a cat.
“We found out that the kittens were pretty low maintenance and that as long as there were people at home with him, it would be easy to take care of him,” Macaulay said.
Macaulay has reported nothing but great experiences with the group’s seven-week-old striped orange tabby, Tigger.
“So far, we’ve had a great time taking care of him and plenty of people have stopped by to visit him,” Macaulay said.
Senior Madie Schider’s sixteen-month-old American Staffordshire Terrier mix Roscoe appears to be just as beloved on campus. He will appear in Delta Sigma Phi’s composite picture this year, and Schider said everyone who meets Roscoe falls in love.
“There’s always that one person that’s like ‘oh my gosh, I’m scared of dogs’, Schider said. “And then when they see how he is with other people, and get to know him, they’re like ‘oh my gosh, I really like this dog.
Schider said she thinks having pets is an incredibly rewarding experience, especially when it’s least expected. Although Roscoe was all but forced on Schider and her family when one of her parent’s co-workers came to them with a dog in need of a home, they learned to love him all the same.
“It was kind of a blessing in disguise. I got back from quarantine and for a month after that he was like ‘my person’, even though he’s a dog.”