Once Upon A Time...

​Long ago, before social media sites took the internet by storm, many people had personal websites they created and decorated with graphics and themed web-sets, like this one.  In the late 1990s and early 2000s, everyone was creating personal websites, and for many, Geocities was the go to place to do just that.  Virtual pets and adoptions were all the rage, with pages dedicated to little cyber pets.  Communication was done by leaving comments in a guestbook along with a link to your website.  Years back, there was a website called The Mousepad run by a lady named Vikimouse.  It was this site where I first came across these cute little mouse-drawn mice that you could adopt along with accessories.  It wasn't long after that I noticed the little mouse houses that people had on their websites, along with little towns and communities.  Webrings were pretty popular and you could search and find site after site of mouse houses to visit and pick up little goodies.  A webring was a collection of similar websites that a Ringmaster, a moderator, approved and added to their ring.  Vikimouse had several webrings, one being called The MousePad. I adopted a little family of mice and named them The Niblets.  They lived in Vikiville, a thriving little city with several other residents and businesses.  You could literally just go down the street clicking to visit the various mouse houses.  We would visit one another and leave messages in guestbooks and later, on tagboards.  The MousePad closed years ago, followed by GeoCities, which Yahoo had acquired in January 1999, making these cute little mice and their mouse houses just a memory.