How the “Ocean’s” Theme Got Started

LONG before a farm was ever on the horizon…my boyfriend and I had just moved in together in Los Angeles. I brought two super sweet cats into the relationship, but we didn’t waste any time expanding our crew of little “bandits”. We’re married now…because (duh), I totally locked that in!

First we rescued a pup (Foxy), and then not long after our second pup (Sasha). Soon after that we rescued our first kitten together. He was totally unplanned, but he suckered me in with an adorable “Meeeeeeeeew!” while we were picking up dog food at a local shop that had an adoption table set up.

This was long before anyone knew we’d ever end up in North Carolina and actually start a real farm! We hypothetically joked to each other… “Wouldn’t it be awesome to someday start a farm and have a WHOLE CREW of animals?!”

We’re big fans of the Ocean’s 11 / 12 / 13 movie franchise…and we love the hilarious dynamic that this misfit crew entails. We decided to just start naming all of our animals after that crew, and maybe someday we could actually get to 11 (or 12…or 13)!

Well we never thought we’d make it 11 at one time, but here we are!

Most of the names from the movie series are male, and since most of our farm animals are female…we had to get creative with adjustments. So 11 years after the arrival of Rusty (our first kitty from our “Ocean’s” gang), we started a farm! Not only did we made it to 11…but quickly surpassed it! We blew through Oceans 12 and 13, and then started adding the female thieves from Ocean’s 8 to our herd.

Two of our current rescues do not have “Ocean’s” themed names since we rescued one of them before we started this tradition, and our newest dog rescue - Bo - already had his name. When we rescue animals that aren’t babies, we keep their existing names since they’re usually old enough to know it.

As of 2022, we’re up to 20 of our herd (past and present) bearing names from the “Ocean’s” series:

Today, our crew consists of six goats, two miniature donkeys, twenty-three chickens, three cats, two dogs, and one (wild) squirrel who comes to door daily in the Summer months for fill up from his standing basket of peanuts.

I have dreams of adding quail and alpacas to the herd next. I’ve got my hands pretty full, so we’ll see how long before we add more to this crew!

Now that we have a FULL crew of bandits from this franchise, we’ll move on to the next theme (or let the kids randomly pick) when it comes to the names of future farm additions.

Watch Videos of each Bandit!

Each one of our animals has their very own highlight reel of video snippets that are added to in real time. If you visit my personal Instagram page @hawkeyegrace, you can view each animal’s unique personality and story through little daily video snippets in their story highlights.