I was actually telling someone at work the story about the irish scally and my aunt's dog who had him for me. <3 I loved that dog, and she loved me.

As for pauw, I'm going to guess he went with cat because he has a cat already.

As for the instrument...christ. I can't imagine the man would have chosen anything particularly conventional, but his taste in music is also fairly questionable. So it's either going to be something insanely boring like "guitar!" or "drums!" or something spooty like "the tuba!" Now that I think about it, the most excited I've ever seen him be about any instrument is that video where Darth Vader plays the harmonica. So I'll go with the Harmonica.