The resident felines refused to acknowledge how late I was up last night/this morning. If there's one thing cats admit to liking, it's consistency, and the first crack of daylight through the curtains will always means one thing and one thing only: Time to start pacing across the resident human's neck and forehead, stopping every third turn to knock something off the nightstand and to recoil in pretend surprise at the consequent crash.
Also as is their habit, now that they've succeeded in rousting me, they've each had three mouthfuls of food, a short patrol around the house, and are now basking in droopy-eyed comfort on the still-warm spot on the bed.
I am sitting upright, drinking leftover coffee to match my mood: lukewarm, no cream, slightly bitter.
Fortunately, there is The Doghouse. I'm pretty sure I'd have loved his clear-eyed appraisal of William F. Buckley, Jr., in any state of mind, but the takedown was just what I needed for a pick-me-up. Go read.
5 comments:
The benefits of being a dog owner - they don't jump up on the bed to lick your face in the morning. (At least, my 90 lb. dog doesn't - thank God.)
A smiling Hillary is on the front page of our national newspaper - again. And is also beaming on the on-line version: (www.theglobeandmail.com)
Sounds like a bad day to look at the paper. The online nytimes had about the same. I was going to say last night that I wasn't quite as upset as Andrew, but I certainly am coming from some place close to him.
Yes, dogs do have the capacity to accept training and boundaries. As my father likes to say, dogs have owners, cats have staff.
On the other hand, when cats have to pee, I don't have to take them out into the sleetstorm to enable said action.
As with humans beings, I would distinguish between "can be" and "are."
Truth is, there's really no blaming a cat for knocking stuff to the ground, especially if such behavior gets it what it wants. The blame belongs to the human who could:
1. Make stuff less readily accessible, or
2. Banish the cats from the bedroom, or
3. Train them to be better behaved.
Okay, two out of three.
In my experience, #1 is taken care of by there always being something to knock off of something else-even if it takes all night to figure it out (I said they were assholes-not that they lacked persistence or a certain type of intelligence).
And #2 just leads to a whole new room full of things to knock off of other things.
But I will grant that my experience may be colored by the fact that my cat happens to have crossed over from "can be" to "is" and it looks like she's there to stay.
Ah, now I see your problem: the single cat. She's bored. Get her a playmate. Two cats are better than one, and in some senses, are easier to care for -- they tend to entertain each other more, and consequently, mess with you less.
When this fails, give them a little pile of catnip and they'll wrestle until they're exhausted.
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