Precious and Fragile Things

I didn't really do this last year, but I thought this year I'd offer lots of picture spam from our Christmas weekend. This will be divided into two posts, the first primarily dealing with Santa and the kiddo with a special appearance from Jack. Next post will be pictures of some wonderful gifts Sam and I received from his parents and sisters.

First up, the Santa swag.


Unwrapping Presents = SRS BSNS

( Nine more pictures under here. )

Jack has this habit of knocking over the trash can, usually to get at his empty cans of cat food to make absolutely sure I have given him every tiny molecule of wet food. Yes, he's a cat. No, he's not so much of a cat that tipping over garbage can for scraps is beneath him. (This only serves as further proof he was a dog in his previous life, especially considering he chases other dogs off the property and acts like he's king of the castle.)

Apparently, he and Sasha have developed a system. Or maybe Sasha's just think she's clever. Whatever it is, whenever Jack has knocked over the trash can, Sasha has come to believe she won't be the one to get in trouble if she helps herself to the garbage. It's already knocked over and she can't help it if the food is right there. Jack was naughty first and that's all that should count, right?

Sasha never goes into the trash or knocks it over. She waits for Jack to do it and only then will she try to get at the food. Jack will at least keep the garbage contained to the kitchen, but Sasha--if I'm not home to pick up the can right away--will take her food to go and bring it into the living room or my bedroom.

But she's still not the one who knocked it over so she shouldn't be fussed at, okay? *sigh*

Other things Jack has apparently taught Sasha despite being younger by several months: How to pounce like a cat. Sam's witnessed this too. Sasha will lie down in the grass like a cat does prior to pouncing on some prey. She might even wiggle her butt a little bit before she leaps to pounce on Jack, who then promptly rolls onto his side to patiently wait while Sasha nuzzles his belly and chin. Yes, my fifty-pound Chow-mix pounces on our ten-plus pound kitty and the kitty loves it. They also groom each other. No joke.

My pets are weird.

...and now I have to go pick up the trash can again. Someone's getting put outside for a bit.

( Female TMI under the cut. )

Dear cats,

In case you didn't notice, I'm not feeling well. You'll get your wet food when I'm not feeling like either my head or my bowels are going to explode. You have an automatic feeder full of dry food. It won't kill you to eat some of it. I don't care if you know where I sleep.

Your occasional servant,

Jade

***

Dear Sasha,

Don't give me that pathetic look. As soon as the miracle of modern medicine makes me feel human again, you're getting a bath. I tried calling you in last night when the rain started. Just because you'd rather romp in the pasture with the goats and the cattle doesn't mean I have to suffer the stench of wet dog or the annoyance of muddy paw prints.

Looking forward to seeing you fluffy and white again,

Jade

I have a cat on my chest (Prissy)* and one stretched out behind my head on the back of the couch (Jack). I have this paranoia that I'm about to become the victim of some sort of cat-related plot.

If I disappear suddenly, you'll know why.

* = Prissy is about eight pounds soaking wet and is the size of some kittens, so it's not problem for her to curl up on my chest while I'm on the laptop. The problem is that lately Jack has come to the conclusion that he should be able to do the same. He's about twice the size of Prissy with long, fluffy hair. About the best he can manage is to stretch out the top half of his torso across my body. This often leads to hands falling asleep and/or mouthfuls of fluffy orange fur when he tries to fit all of his body in one spot.

I think either I had a ghostly visitor last night or Jack can jump rather high.

I was sleeping peacefully, having fallen asleep pretty early last night. Suddenly, the overhead light popped on and the strings you pull down to turn the light and/or fan off and on were swinging wildly and clanging together noisly. Jack was at the foot of my bed looking up at the light, and I heard Sasha scratching at the door wanting to be let back in (she'd asked to go out before I fell asleep; this was about three hours later).

Now, my bed is pretty high up all things considered, and I'd guess there's about two-and-a-half-foot gap between the mattress and the strings. Why Jack would leap for them, I have no clue. Maybe he heard Sasha scratching at the door and I wasn't waking up fast enough to his liking to let her in. Or maybe he was trying to play around.

Or maybe it wasn't him. All I know is that I did turn off that light and that the strings didn't swing themselves like that after the light being turned on, something caused it. This house is very quiet at night, so the noise is something I remember clearly after I woke up.

A few minutes ago, Jack strolled in through the cat door proudly carrying something large in his mouth. I saw fluttering out the corner of my eye and I freaked out thinking he was bringing in a small mammal. (Allow me to pause here to mention that once he brought me a dead mouse as a present...in my bed.)

Well, I finally cornered Jack and discovered it was not a mammal but an insect. A huge moth to be exact.


(For size reference, that's a college-ruled sheet of notebook paper.)

I immediately tried to rescue the moth (and take the above picture), which proved to be no easy task as Jack was disappointed I'd take his toy away from him and Sasha, who has been the Bug Eradicator(TM) since she was a few months old, decided she'd try and eat the moth too. Both she and Jack gave me pitiful and confused looks as I pushed them away and tried to capture the moth. (Okay, Jack was more glaring than confused.)

I did manage to get it outside, but unfortunately it can't fly anymore and can only flutter around on the ground. Even though I freed it, Jack went back outside through the cat door and carried the poor moth back into the house to bat around some more.

Never a dull moment here.

I am getting so sick of people who have dogs and can't control them.

Today, my mother pulled up next to her driveway instead of pulling up under her carport which is in her back yard and is behind a fence, mostly because she knew she'd be going back out this evening for the kiddo's t-ball game. She had her dogs, Wicket and Ginger, with her just like she's done millions of times before. Her dogs, a Lhasa Apso and Miniature Daschund, are good about sticking with her and following her through the gate and into the house. What Mom didn't know was that her neighbor's dogs had managed to get out of their fence.

I'll spare the details, but those dogs (German Sheperds according to Mom, but I'm not 100% on that) came over and attacked Ginger, the Miniature Daschund. She couldn't get to her before they carried her off, and by the time she did get to them, it was too late.

Ginger was 13/14 years old, nearly blind, and while she was obviously slowing down, she was still full of life. What's worse is that she was my late grandmother's dog and when she died of cancer, Mom took over care of Ginger. Those dogs mean the world to my mother, and Ginger was just one more connection to her own mother so this loss is really hard. My aunt is probably a mess too since she would have taken Ginger if not for her full house of dogs, and my uncles will likely be hurt because they associated Ginger with my grandmother too. I'm pretty much not dealing because I'm just not able to process much beyond anger at the moment, and I have no idea how the kiddo will take it. He wasn't close to her so maybe he'll be all right about it, I don't know.

As for the neighbor, he offered my mother money, which she refused because, well, how the fuck do you quantify the years we've had Ginger in our lives? We'd seen the dogs loose a few months ago, an admittedly first-time occurence as far as I knew, and had called him to let him know and that was when I learned he apparently has shock collars on them because "they won't listen to [him] otherwise." I wasn't impressed to learn that at the time, and had I known they were apparently aggressive to smaller animals/dogs, I might have been a lot more worried. I don't know if this is the first time those dogs have attacked another, but at this point I don't really care. He knew they weren't controllable and he didn't do anything more to rectify it despite them getting loose before. I wish Mom would call the police since the man can be fined where he is for his dogs getting loose (she lives in the town limits, so they are a lot stricter than they are for my neck of the woods), but she's too upset to really know what to do. I suppose there's a part of me happy that the other neighbor didn't have her small children outside playing because what if they went after them, or if they saw the attack? Mom had to watch as it is and I've got a lot of grisly details I'm sparing. Children wouldn't need to see that, and a dog attack is not something you forget.

My evening will be spent consoling Mom and...I'm not sure what else. Just, if you're a dog owner or are thinking of becoming one, you don't have to enroll your pets in obedience classes, I swear. But you do need to know your dogs, know how they are around strangers and other animals, and if you can't find that out, then keep track of them and watch them when you're outside. If you notice aggression or that they aren't heeding your commands, please talk to your vet or to someone who knows how to train dogs as soon as you know there is a problem. And if that person tells you to just get a shock collar or something similar, get a second opinion. Also, please spay or neuter your pets, preferably before they're a year old. These dogs were kept in a fenced-in yard and were never expected to escape, but today they did and it wasn't the owner who paid the price for the mistake, it as my mother. If you click on the tag "pets: gwen," you'll see that this isn't the first time I've had to deal with an uncontrolled dog killing a beloved pet.

A while back, I had two dogs beds since before I had Sasha, there was Zoe and Penny. Well, the beds had removeable machine-washable covers, and when Sasha was about four or five months old and in her chewing phase, I took the covers off to wash them. Sasha tore one of the beds while the cover was off and got the stuffing everywhere. The bed had to be tossed out, and from then on she and Penny had one bed to share between them.

Today, I happened to see a nice bed that was big enough for both dogs at Wal-Mart and opted to bring it home. I set the bed down next to the old bed, which is where Penny was laying. Not two minutes after I put it down, Prissy the cat ran over to the bed and promptly laid down on it, claiming it for her own. Keep in mind this bed is big enough for Sasha, who at this point weighs fifty or more pounds. Prissy can sit on my shoulder and weighs less than ten pounds. That's a whole lot of bed for a cat her size.

The funniest part about the whole thing is that neither of the dogs challenged this. Penny continued to snooze less than a foot away on the old bed, only giving Prissy a casual glance while Sasha took one look at her and flopped down on the floor to enjoy the rawhide bone I got for her. Yes, they know their place.

It's been about an hour since I first put the bed down. Penny has spent about two minutes on the bed, but as soon as she got up, Prissy reclaimed it and is now resting peacefully on it while Sasha has curled up on the old bed. Penny has moved to the floor next to Sasha. (I'm trying to get a picture of this, but Sasha hears it when I turn on the camera and gets excited and runs up to me.)

I forsee myself purchasing a small cat bed just for Prissy. I also forsee that this will probably do nothing to change the fact that she has proclaimed herself queen of the big fluffy bed.

Though I do have to say I am very happy that the dogs and the cat can lay literally inches from one another without causing an incident.

The puppy is warming up to the kiddo and me. She's been coming out to find me and wanting to be petted now whereas she's had this tendency to find a quiet space to rest and shy away when she was walking around. Outside she's starting to brave taking more than a few steps from the steps and is actually prancing around a bit and running. She even tried to play with the kiddo, but he scared her by accident and I have to remind him she needs to get a little bigger before he can really play with her. All in all it's a far cry from the night I found her.

I took the camera out today when I took her and Penny out, and in between reassuring Penny she's still my dog too, I managed to snap a couple of cute pictures of the puppy.



You can't see it there because she has her tail down, but it does indeed curl up over her back when she's relaxed, so she's possibly got at least some Chow in her recent ancestry. She sees the vet in the morning and, assuming a clean bill of health and no owners come forward, I'll be keeping her. I've still got an extra dog bed (not that Penny uses hers) and I can afford the extra kibble and vet bills. Plus, I already know a great dog groomer through Mom, so upkeep for her coat if it stays fluffy won't be an issue.

I'm going to be building a fence for my backyard. I was already planning to get one, but with a puppy I'll step things up a bit and go ahead and call around for estimates. I've noticed the neighbor's black lab getting bolder about coming in our yard, and the other day when Gwen got out (she's used to being outdoor/indoor though she rarely gets outside if I can help it) he harrassed her and had her cornered by barking and growling at her. Plus there's a few other dogs I've seen coming around, so I worry about Penny being let out without supervision and I figure a fenced-in backyard would be good for her and the kiddo (I'll be putting up a swingset this spring too). I've got a huge area for it and I can make it to where I can just let them out from my back porch.

The only real problem now is I have to name her. (I am such a freaking softie.)

( Two moar pics of cuteness under the cut. )

Look! There is snow on my back deck!



And, more snow!



While I was taking pictures, the neighbor's huskie wandered up. I say he's Penny's boyfriend because he'll often be waiting outside for her to come out and play. When I got back from Atlanta and brought Penny home from Mom's, he sat outside the first night and howled so that I'd let her back outside to play. It was cute...and mildly annoying.



He's a handsome devil, though.