cgardner
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The equipment list list looks OK except for the SB. I'd suggest a med (24 x 32) Photoflex MultiDome Q39. It has interchangeable white/silver/gold liners. The gold isn't of much use, but if you use the silver without diffusers on the front you get a nice, punchy source which creates specular highlights which is ideal for furry and feathered pets. The specular reflections make hair and feathers look more 3D and with white fur you need both specular highlights and distinct shadows. A controlled silver source is the ideal tool.
As for 1 light vs 2 consider this:
Control of lighting requires independent control of key light, which creates the pattern, and fill, which controls the tone of the shadows and the illusion of "hard" and "soft" in the overall lighting pattern. If using one light the fill must come from a reflector. Reflectors are easy to used outdoors where there is light coming from all directions to bounce, but indoors if you are short lighting a full face view the key light is facing the subject making it difficult to position a reflector where is can both catch the light and do its job effectively.
Most beginners and many pros don't really comprehend the role fill plays. It's job is to put detail in the areas the key light doesn't hit EVERYWHERE the camera sees. The fill source can fill if it creates shadows. Where there are fill shadows, which occurs when fill is moved off axis, there will be dark voids on the face is low places like smile lines and the corners of the mouth.
In a two light strategy you simply park the key light over the camera where it creates few shadows and pretty much forget about it. In lighting rations the fill is the constant 1. What changes is the strength of the fill relative to the fill which is lifting the shadows. The key light overlaps the fill. That is how contrast is controlled so both the shadow and the highlight detail can be recorded at the same time.
Conceptually it works like this: If you started in a dark room and put the fill over the camera, you'd want to raise its power until you saw detail in the darkest objects in the foreground:
Then to add separation with a dark background you might add a background light:
or alternately just use a lighter background if all you have is two lights.
Then when the "key" light is added in front and to the side it doesn't change the shadows which were lifted by the fill, it simply creates highlights on top of the fill.
Now it doesn't really matter if you turn on the key first and fill second the cause and effect is the same: key overlaps fill. Exposure simpler if you start with fill. We've already got the shadows exposed perfectly in step 1. In step 3 where the key light is added we just keep adding it until the highlights are just below clipping in the camera playback warning.
The fill is the "cake" and key light is the "icing" on top of it. If you want to decorate the icing a bit more you add some piping in the form of back rim lighting.
Rim lighting actually creates the strongest illusion of 3D shape. Stop and consider the phases of the moon. When flat lit and full it looks like a flat disk and it looks most like a ball when rim lighting define the curved edge and most of the front is in shadow. That's true of most 3D objects. The reason we put the key light in front is because we humans react emotionally to eye contact and in a portrait its necessary to put light in the eyes to enable the eye contact dynamic and create natural modeling on the face . So the final step in a classic / conventional portrait set-up is to add a rim light component:
There is no rule saying how many lights must be used or where they should be placed. I just happen to have the four light exercise on line as a demonstration of the cause and effect of a classic four light strategy in defining 3D shape. It provides a good road map leading to the underlying goal of the exercise of lighting, fooling the brain of the viewer with a pattern of contrast into thinking a 2D photo is a real 3D object.
I had the good fortune at age 20 to get a job with a master portrait and wedding photographer named Monte Zucker. At the time he did all his portraits by widow light with a reflector. I learned how to light that way. He did all the reception photos with direct dual flash - no modifiers - in an overlapping key over neutral fill from a flash over the camera on a bracket. The advice to start with two lights is based on the cause and effect learned from that experience.
If you start with fill over the camera when learning, the only variables you need to focus on is the position and strength of the key light relative to the fill. The fill will do its job without your intervention. Once you master the basics of short, butterfly and broad lighting that way you can then set up a lighting pattern with fill starting over the camera, and then without moving the subject or key light move the fill light around to the side and be able to better see when it is shaded and why there are dark voids in the pattern. You can then decide whether the lighting on the face looks better with the dark voids. If you start with a reflector and place it too far back behind the face in an attempt to catch can reflect the key light you may come to accept dark voids in low places as par for the course.
Either way eventually you will want and need to learn how to use two, three and perhaps four lights effectively, so starting with two just gets you up the learning curve a bit faster 
Chuck
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