Scenes from the Pet House

The way my mornings go in winter.

Little Dog #1 AKA Jeffrey AKA Mr. J: My toes are cold. Can I sit on your lap while you eat breakfast? I promise not to lick your toast.

adorable, right? But I am a cruel person and say “No!” and “Go lie down in the giant dog bed I bought you, you spoiled thing you!” And I pet his fuzzy head.

Then Little-but-not-quite-as-little Dog #2 AKA Ursula, AKA U AKA Ursabear says: What about me? I will sit on your lap and help you with your breakfast, see how useful I am?

But my heart is made of flint. I refuse! I pet her little head and say, “No, now go eat your breakfast, you still have kibble left.”

Then comes Remy, AKA Cat #3, AKA Noodleshark, AKA psychokitten and he says: SUCKERS, you ASKED!

Remylaptime — Jeez, this picture is nearly life-sized. But hey, it just means you get the full force of his SMUG.

My life the sitcom

Sometimes I don’t understand how certain events happen, even when I’m the one making the choices.

I blame the toaster.

The toaster HATES ME.

I started a late breakfast this morning with two slices of toast; the toaster rattled angrily, did its best to char the toast, then as a final FU, flipped the toast onto the floor… where the small schnauzer ate it. That’s all right; one of those slices was for him, anyway.

But I didn’t feel like dealing with the angry toaster again, so I stuck a croissant into the oven to warm up. Then I forgot about it, until the thought crossed my mind, that hey, I was hungry, wasn’t I making breakfast? And turned around to see the black smoke STREAMING out of the oven vents.

(apparently my coffee scent overrode the burning bread scent… and to be fair, the kitchen already smelled like burnt bread because of the toaster)

Opening the oven revealed the croissant was on fire. Yay. Some foods are great with a flambe. Croissants, not so much. The usual dither ensued: what do you do with the giant flaming smoking thing to a) keep the smoke alarm from going off and b) stop the fire.

I grabbed the pan, opened the back door, and flung the flaming croissant through the air.

Jeffrey, the small schnauzer, and Ursula, the… adorable dog thing, nearly kneecapped me racing out to CATCH THE FLAMING CROISSANT!

Jeffrey is a schnauzer! He has a beard! That should not catch on fire! Cue panic. While still holding the scalding pan, and smoke filling the room, and the cats deciding maybe they should rush outside also….

In the end, the hot pan went into the doggy dig pit (full of sand and snow melt); the cats got shoved inside (full of indignation); and Jeffrey grabbed the flaming croissant, and QUICKLY dumped it into a mud puddle. Then he ate it.

This dog needs grooming. LOOK AT ALL THE FLUFF THAT COULD HAVE CAUGHT ON FIRE!!!!

No one is on fire. And the smoke alarm did not go off. Jeffrey does not seem to be suffering from a stomach ache.

I’m taking it as a vaguely embarrassing win. And a sign that my great plans for baking Sand Tarts/writing complicated confrontation scenes in the novel at the same time are not a “go”. No multi-tasking for me, today. At least… not before a LOT more coffee.

Learning in the Animal World

I am not the most… disciplinary of pet people. I blame it on my scientist background. When it comes down to a disciplinary moment, at least fifty percent of the time, I just sit back and watch things play out instead of leaping in with a stern “NO!” and redirection. I like to see animals problem solve, even if that problem is: the new bag of dog cookies is up higher than I can reach by stretching, how can I get to that delicious bag, maybe if I stand on this chair here, and LEAP…. Or maybe I can scare a cat into running across the bookshelf and knocking it down….

I like to see things learn, is what it comes down to. And pets do learn! They learn from each other, they learn from other species, and they learn from watching us.

I have a kitten (though he turned two earlier this month) who I adopted from my vet clinic. Remy. He’s a little psycho, and was obviously feral before he was captured and cleaned up. As my friend Leigh says, “He didn’t know how to cat.” One of the little hiccups in this behavior earned him the nickname “Stinkpot” from the vet clinic, because he’d hit the litter box and then zip out, without covering his waste. This behavior continued when I brought him home. It continued until the day my older, bigger cat Dean followed him into the litterbox, and bitching the entire time, covered up the waste.

Now Remy covers up. He covers up OBSESSIVELY but cats can never do things the easy way. But hey, he learned his lesson. And often he runs over to Dean to whisker talk right after. I have to assume it’s the equivalent of a toddler reporting in to their parents that they went potty!

Ursula curious 2 I have Ursula, the young dog (she is just shy of two years and she is a veritable sponge of learning.)

Sometimes she learns things I would prefer her not to learn, but that’s the way it goes.

My roommate found a muppet running loose on the street and brought it home for its own safety (a golden doodle pup about Ursula’s age, twice her size). Ursula was ENCHANTED, right up to the moment where the muppet leaped up on her hind legs, and smacked Ursula flat to the floor with both front legs. SMACK! FLAT DOG!

Ursula was stunned. What was that? She didn’t know dogs could do that??? They went on to play until the muppet’s owner was located.

Then, two days later, Ursula rose onto her hind legs and brought both forepaws down at once and SMACKED Dean into the floor. Ursula was thrilled! She did it right! Sadly, she’s been doing it ever since. SMACK goes the kitten. SMACK goes the other dog. SMACK goes Dean–though, showing his own learning, he’s learned to get out of the way. I do intervene when she attempts to smack down the elderly cat who is pretty much all bones and attitude.

And she learns from me. Not just the useful things like “sit”, “no teeth”, “drop the ball”, and “for god’s sake don’t eat that, drop it drop it now!” But things I never ever had any intention or concept that I could teach her.

As an example, I make my bed every morning (ADULTING!) and every morning I have to kick the dogs off so that I can get it tidy. This involves a lot of complaining and saying “Scoot!” and flipping the covers around. This is particularly complicated by the fact that I have a top layer that gets changed daily so the dog fur and dog detritus does not get into the actual bedding.

Lately, Ursula has been performing a strange behavior. One where she races into the bedroom, starts yanking on all the blankets, and making her strange little talky noises. She only does this when I’m there to watch her, and she always stops and grins at me after she’s gone mangling the top of my bed. It has finally dawned on me: the damn dog is mocking me. She’s doing the equivalent of saying “Haha, this is you! Look at me, I’m being the silly person! Wah wah wah toss the sheets around. Wah wah wah.”

It makes me wonder what else they learn from us that we don’t recognize right away.

5 am and miscellany

So the puppy needed to go run amok at 5am; a heavy work load currently means she’s been a bit neglected and the boredom has built up. So out she went into the yard, a neon pink flashing circlet around her neck–have you ever tried to find a black dog in the dark?? Then the little old mini schnauzer wanted to go out as well.

Twenty minutes later, every one is inside, given a cookie, and taken back up to bed. I lay down and the 5am questions began: how screwed up is my shoulder/neck tonight? Should I take an advil or a muscle relaxant or will I be able to fall back asleep? If I do take a pill, I will have to eat something, and while I’m contemplating the idea of wandering back downstairs to joylessly eat a few saltines, Jeffrey (the schnauzer) prompted an entirely new set of questions: Where does he GET the damned spiders and why has he put one on my face!!!

This is a recurring question, sadly. I swept the spider off, turned the lights back on, and cleared my sheets of an annoyed wolf spider. Then I took the dog back downstairs and removed the other spider clinging to his fur. This is the second time Jeffrey has come in from the yard in the middle of the night wearing spiders that he generously shares with me.

I am going to have to institute a spider check at the door, to go along with the other procedures: no sticks? No rocks? Feet not too muddy? Did you roll in something I don’t want to smell in the house? Are you wearing spiders???

I am very grateful to not be alarmed by spiders.

Still fighting the revision, though I’m hopeful that once I get through chapters 18-22, matters will get easier. No snippet today though.

Listening to Meg Myers’ Take Me to the Disco. So far, a lot of powerful songs. My favorites are probably Jealous Sea, Little Black Death, and Funeral. Also listening to Kandle and really liking her as well. Discovered her via July Talk’s Peter Dreimanis doing backing vocals for When My Body Breaks.