Questions on Jewish (religious) law?

Travel Info
I was going to ask this in the Religion&Spirituality section, but when I saw who(allegedly) had just posted a question, I decided to ask this here so excuse me if this is the wrong place to ask this. I have a couple questions:
1) Can devout/orthodox Jewish people have pets like cat/dog or does this violate the clean/unclean provision from the OT?
2) Since there are prohibitions on inter-species breeding of animals (horse + donkey = mule), why were mules the mount of royalty (e.g., King David)?
3) Why was the importation of war horses prohibited for King Solomon? Was it because they were horses or because they were imported?
4) Are devout/orthodox Jewish people allowed to have horses for pets/recreation?
Thanks for any info - I'm animal-crazy and was just curious.

Travel Tips

1) Classically Jewish people did not keep those pets, but in recent times it has become more popular. There is no prohibition against cats, however with dogs one has to be extra careful that it does not injure or cause harm to anybody.

2) I don't remember anything about mules being the mount of royalty. Perhaps I need to brush up on my sources, but there is also a legitimate chance that that is a mis-translation and they meant donkey.

3) There is an old testament law against a king of Israel acquiring too much horses/chariots and women. It is unclear if this is meant as horses for the army or horses/chariots for his own personal use. The reason given in the old testament is that acquiring too many horses "will cause the people to return to Egypt". This in fact happened, as to facilitate the horse trade, Solomon had to establish a trader colony in Egypt, effectively returning some Israelites to Egypt against God's wishes.

4) Horses are a-ok!

It seems you have a basic misunderstanding of the clean/unclean concept in Judaism. If an animal is unclean (non-kosher), all that means is that it cannot be eaten. One can, however, own pets and even feed their pets meat from a non-kosher animal. The only unclean non-kosher animal with special status would be the pig, which is prohibited from being grown on Israeli soil.
Others

Those aren't common questions but it is always good to ask.

1)But the clean and unclean law only applies to food.That it is either kosher or non kosher.We don't eat pets!!lol.It is not OT.It is called the OU.Orthodox Union.

2)This is a prohibited because in the since of human and un human animals breeding not animals and animals.

3)I think it was because they were horses but to this question go to http://www.askmoses.com/

4)Yes actually Judaism encourages to have pets so that we can give animals homes with loving people.That's why animal cruelty is such a hot topic in Judaism.

And your welcome.Some people are always animal crazy.I am a animal-lover but not animal-crazy.lol.
I am a Modern Orthodox Jew.