With their sophomore effort, Millennium, due to hit stores next month, words can't describe how busy Backstreet Boys Brian Littrell, 24, Kevin Richardson, 27, Howie Dorough, 25, A.J. McLean, 21, and Nick Carter, 19, have been. So, when the Orlando, Florida-based quintet last found some downtime to chat with us at BOP HQ, we wanted to make them feel like they could just kick back, put their feet up and shoot the breeze about anything other than the ever-consuming music industry. The result? These "All I Have To Give" songsters chose to take us on a trip down memory lane revisiting their furry, friendly and sometimes finicky first pets.

Brian's li'l ball of mischief
"Missy the cat was my first pet. It was short for Mischief and I picked her out back when I was in high school. [I got her] from a girl I knew in school. Her cat just had a litter of kittens and she just wanted to get rid of them. When we first brought her home, she was always digging or clawing on something. So I was like, 'Mischief, I'll name her Missy.' So we did. She had long black hair, except for four little white paws and a white bottom lip and a white belly.
"Back during high school, I worked at Long John Silver's [fish restaurant], and since cats love fish, every time I came home from work after school, she would always come and sleep with me because I smelled like fish. So now, every time I go home, she knows it's me and when I try to unpack my luggage, she jumps in my suitcase and sniffs around looking for fish. Right now, she's fat and at home chillin'."
Currently Brian has no four-legged friend to call his own, but he tells us he dreams of owning a Chihuahua named Spud one day! (well, he does! but it's not named Spud, it's Tyke!)

A.J.'s not-so-amorous antics
"My first pet cat--I used to mess with this cat all the time! I thought he liked me, but he actually liked my mom. He didn't like me at all. One time he was outside running around in the backyard and I began making noises [to him] and it started attacking me. My mother was going to let me in the house, but she said, 'No, I'm going to make [A.J.] pay for bothering this cat.'
"One time I remember the cat jumped on me and scratched my legs up because I had been bothering it. Ends up, we got rid of it. But my mom taught me a lesson about that: Don't go treating animals badly or they'll come after you!"
A.J. has had a boxer-Rhodesian ridgeback mix named Delilah for a year and a half now. His mom, Denise, watches her when he's on the road.

Kevin's heartache
"Growing up, I've always had dogs that stayed outside in the backyard. When I was really little, we had two dogs, and then when I got into high school, we had a boxer. We got him for my father for his birthday. But my dad ran over him! We lived in this conference center and my dad was the manager of it and would have to drive around it and taking care of things. So when he would go around, the dog would follow him. One day, the dog just ran right under the truck. It broke my dad's heart.
"After that, we got him a Saint Bernard named Hoss because he was as big as a hoss [horse, with a thick Kentucky accent]. But my neighbor shot him! It was so stupid because we lived out in the woods, way out in the sticks. And you know how Saint Bernards slobber a lot? When they do, it can be misconstrued as possibly having rabies. That's why they thought, so they show my dog."
Despite Kevin's previous pet tragedies, he hopes to eventually make a loving, safe home for an English bulldog.

Nick's lost-and-found furball
"I would never get another dog like my first pet, Scraps. I named him Scraps because I found him in this [abandoned] house. The people had moved out of it and they had a gate around it, and he and two other dogs would hang in the front yard. He was a little Pekinese. He had a flat face, black ears and he was all brown and tan. He had just been left there for a long time, so I took him home and I asked my parents if I could keep him.
"He used to run around our yard like a chicken with his head cut off. He was crazy! He was so funny because his ears would always flop up and down and he had a curly tail. He couldn't make it over the grass because his legs were so short.
"Eventually, we had to give him away--but not before he had puppies with my sister's dog, Boo Boo--because I started going away a lot myself and I couldn't take care of him. So, basically, I would never get another dog like him."
You could easily call Nick an animal freak. Aside from a golden Labrador named Simba, a German shepherd named Samson, two schnauzers named Pepper and Frosty and three cats named Bandit, Rocky and Sugar housed by the Carter clan, Nick also has two puppy pugs, Willie and Mikey. Oh, and a goldfish, too.

Howie's the zookeeper
"When I was younger, I had a bunch of rabbits. At one time I had about 30. One's name was Thumper and another one's name was Skully. And while growing up, my dad had a canine because he was a retired police officer. He was one of the first eight guys that started the Canine Corps in Orlando, so we used to have this German shepherd police dog around the house all the time. Also we had a cat named Christopher, who would try to beat up on the dog because it liked sniffing around all over and wouldn't leave the cat alone. He was always pestering the heck out of him. He tried, but he couldn't because he's been declawed."
Aside from Christopher the cat, Howie's sister has a Pekinese named Oscar. One day, he tells BOP, he'll own a parrot.