OJAI : Animals Receive All Comforts of Home

Ojai resident Marty Fast grew up in a home where dogs weren’t allowed inside.

Now she has two dogs who spend a lot of their time on the living room couch, nine potbellied piglets who live in her kitchen, and a sow who sleeps under the dining room table.

“Doesn’t everyone have a pig in their house?” she asked, smiling.

There is also a parrot and, in the back yard, a neutered boar, a thoroughbred gelding, two desert tortoises, 12 quail and 20 finches.

Fast’s collection of animals began with two dogs and a parrot she got while she and her former husband lived on a sailboat in Hawaii for 10 years.

But the menagerie multiplied after Fast moved back to Ojai and bought a house on one acre of horse property.

“When you have more space, you seem to fill the space with whatever you enjoy filling it with,” Fast said.

And she enjoys animals.

Most of the animals have either been rescued from shelters or received from friends who couldn’t care for them, said Fast, who works as a biologist with the Casitas Municipal Water District.

She doesn’t have cats, however.

“I don’t want any food chains around here,” Fast said, referring to cats’ predatory instincts.

Despite her devotion to animals, Fast got more than she bargained for when she bred her Vietnamese potbellied pig, Chloe.

The sow rejected her litter of nine babies as soon as they were born one month ago, leaving Fast and some friends to work around the clock bottle-feeding them for a week, until they were strong enough to drink from a dish.

“It was a tremendous amount of work,” she said.

She plans to sell the litter in about two months. But after adding up the costs of feeding, spaying and neutering the animals, she will be happy just to break even.

In addition, Fast has spent several thousand dollars building a small aviary for her birds and pens for the sow, boar, horse and tortoises.

She admitted that the animals are an expensive hobby.

But, she said, “I don’t go to the beauty parlor and I don’t go to the bar. Instead I have my family out here.”