Fairy tales are full of unusual adventures involving animals. The Bremen Town Musicians for example lays out a procession of animals that all decide to leave their former occupations to become a band. You could use this story, and others like it, to illustrate the time line for which animals came into the tale first and to keep track of the events with the students.
Ask the class to volunteer the pets they have or have had. Many households have more than one pet, or they've had a succession of pets. This procession of animals can be assigned ordinal numbers to show when students had what pets and in what order they were acquired. You could also bring in your own stories of pets you've had, and if you don't have any stories you could always make some up to bring the lesson home.
Ordinal numbers have to have a particular thing that's being described, so you always need to be careful to explain what the numbers are describing. For instance, if you were describing the largest dogs out of a group then you might list a Saint Bernard, a German shepherd and a toy poodle. On the other hand if you were listing these same three dogs by age, then you might put them in a different order depending on how old they were.
Ordinal numbers are used in math, but also in English and science as well. As such if you're discussing evolution, circus animals or even the characters in Tarzan, you have to use ordinal numbers to describe where those animals fit in the lesson. Incorporate ordinal numbers in all the subjects you teach.