I've always had a "mixed pet" household. In the home where I grew up, there was generally at least one cat, and from first grade on, generally also a dog. I always heard the old adage about "fighting like cats and dogs", but in my house, there were often times when the dog and the cat were sound asleep cuddled together on the couch.....
The trend of having at least one pet in the home continued when I rented my first off-campus place in college. My boyfriend and I had rented a small trailer, but we had both left our cats with our parents, as they had never been away from the old homesteads and we both were sensible enough to not take them away from their familiar surroundings. One very hot August day, when I had opened all the windows trying to get it to cool off, then opened both doors, figuring letting in bugs was better than roasting in my own skin. Part-way through the afternoon, I came out of the bedroom to find a strange kitten asleep on my couch.
Asking around to all the neighbors when he kept returning, we discovered he had just shown up one day and no one "owned" him. We named him "Quat" (because he was a "Quazy Cat") and started feeding him, thinking the adoption was finalized when he started returning to sleep in the house each night. After moving to another apartment, however, Quat proved to us that not all cats have a good sense of direction. He got lost several times when I would let him out, and when I was walking around the neighborhood, people kept saying "Oh, thank goodness! I thought we'd been adopted by a stray!" When there came a point that I DIDN"T find him, one of our neighbors who had adopted a little kitten who was driving him nuts gave us his kitten, whom we named Avatar (after the good wizard in the movie "Wizards", one of my boyfriend's favorite movies at the time). Avatar was with us until we had to have him euthanized for kidney failure at the ripe old age of 17.
Throughout the years, as my boyfriend became my husband and then we added two children to the family, we were also continuing to add pets. When Avatar was "cat-napped" when we were moving to Florida and my mother-in-law was insisting that a black cat would die in the Florida heat, I adopted a young black cat whom I named "Talon" after the good guy in the movie "The Sword and the Sorcerer". Then came a husky/german shepherd mix dog we named "Buck" after the main character in "Call of the Wild". Then there was a bunny (our son named him "Bugs Bunny"), several fish (mostly unnamed except for the plecostomus, whom the kids called "Mr. P"), several other cats - some of whom didn't survive their first trips into the outside, as my husband never liked having cat pans around - etc. As we ran into lay offs from jobs, causing us to have to move more frequently, we slowly let the number of pets in the house decrease as they died or disappeared, allowing us to cut back to a single dog and a single cat at about the time that we moved into the house we have been in since 1998. Throughout our years with the animals, we had noticed a bit of a phenomenon when it came to the pecking order in the animal kingdom: All of our dogs, whether coming to us from a shelter, a home without other pets, or from a farm full of animals, all deferred to the cats when hissed at and slapped across the face the first time. If the dog was eating and the cat walked over to see what was in the dish, the dog would always step aside, going back to the food when the cat had sniffed and moved on. Even though the dogs were all large enough that the cat could have been a snack, the cat ruled and the dog drooled......
A few years ago, it was decided that our current pets would be the last we would have. The reasons were many.
First off, the children were graduating high school and moving out, so there was really no need to have a dog to protect them when they got home from school any more. Then there was the fact that we love to go camping, and it was getting harder as well as more expensive to find pet sitters to come in and care for the cat when we were away. There was also the fact that we had a husky/collie at the time, so a long ride to a camp site always resulted in me being unable to move once we arrived because my legs had been put to sleep by 85 pounds of dog leaning on me for the whole ride so that he sniff out the window. When the dog, Bear, and the Maine Coon cat, Tiger, both developed cancers, eventually leading us to having to euthanize them both within two months of each other, we were heartbroken, but stuck by the idea that it was better to not have any pets than have a pet who was staying home alone all the time while we worked. The only pet still living in the house technically belonged to our daughter, who had brought a little Shih Tzu/Pomeranian mix back with her when she moved back home from New York City.
But then our daughter moved to an apartment where she couldn't have a dog. Pookah, who had moved in with us shortly before the loss of Tiger and Bear, needed a temporary place until his mama could get settled into an apartment where he could live. She soon discovered that was harder said than done, and since my husband, who has never liked small dogs, had decided that Pookah wasn't half bad for an ankle-biter, we offered to keep him with us on a more permanent basis. Small enough to not cause the same problems as Bear when we went camping, Pookah has adapted to spending a lot of time alone.....
until recently......
Once again, our daughter has moved into a situation that won't allow her to take along the cat she now has - at least for a couple of months. Her roommate, who has two cats, also needed a temporary place for her animals. Rather than make them bring the cats to a shelter to hope the boys would still be there when they could take them back, we've opened our home - and noticed that phenomenon of pecking order again.
Meeko, the youngest of the cats and the most mischievous, noticed that, whenever I've brought Pookah to visit his "mama", Pookah got very nervous about the cat (mostly because of Tiger, who was 18 pounds and much bigger than the tiny puppy who first moved in with us. Tiger terrorized the poor puppy). Meeko has been using this to his advantage over the past few days that they've all been in the same house. Pookah, even though he growls to try to keep some control, will defer to the cat 99.9% of the time. Moses, who looks just like Meeko, has been starting to discover that Pookah will back down despite the growling. The only one who hasn't figured out yet that the noises the dog makes are mostly bluff is Thomas, who is blind on one side and a little more skittish because of it. I give Thomas about another week or so before he comes to the conclusion that the cats rule this house........
So, I don't know about other people's homes, but in this house, cats rule, dogs drool, and the humans just need to make sure everyone is well fed and petted when desired....
I wonder how I can use this in a book???
The trend of having at least one pet in the home continued when I rented my first off-campus place in college. My boyfriend and I had rented a small trailer, but we had both left our cats with our parents, as they had never been away from the old homesteads and we both were sensible enough to not take them away from their familiar surroundings. One very hot August day, when I had opened all the windows trying to get it to cool off, then opened both doors, figuring letting in bugs was better than roasting in my own skin. Part-way through the afternoon, I came out of the bedroom to find a strange kitten asleep on my couch.
Asking around to all the neighbors when he kept returning, we discovered he had just shown up one day and no one "owned" him. We named him "Quat" (because he was a "Quazy Cat") and started feeding him, thinking the adoption was finalized when he started returning to sleep in the house each night. After moving to another apartment, however, Quat proved to us that not all cats have a good sense of direction. He got lost several times when I would let him out, and when I was walking around the neighborhood, people kept saying "Oh, thank goodness! I thought we'd been adopted by a stray!" When there came a point that I DIDN"T find him, one of our neighbors who had adopted a little kitten who was driving him nuts gave us his kitten, whom we named Avatar (after the good wizard in the movie "Wizards", one of my boyfriend's favorite movies at the time). Avatar was with us until we had to have him euthanized for kidney failure at the ripe old age of 17.
Throughout the years, as my boyfriend became my husband and then we added two children to the family, we were also continuing to add pets. When Avatar was "cat-napped" when we were moving to Florida and my mother-in-law was insisting that a black cat would die in the Florida heat, I adopted a young black cat whom I named "Talon" after the good guy in the movie "The Sword and the Sorcerer". Then came a husky/german shepherd mix dog we named "Buck" after the main character in "Call of the Wild". Then there was a bunny (our son named him "Bugs Bunny"), several fish (mostly unnamed except for the plecostomus, whom the kids called "Mr. P"), several other cats - some of whom didn't survive their first trips into the outside, as my husband never liked having cat pans around - etc. As we ran into lay offs from jobs, causing us to have to move more frequently, we slowly let the number of pets in the house decrease as they died or disappeared, allowing us to cut back to a single dog and a single cat at about the time that we moved into the house we have been in since 1998. Throughout our years with the animals, we had noticed a bit of a phenomenon when it came to the pecking order in the animal kingdom: All of our dogs, whether coming to us from a shelter, a home without other pets, or from a farm full of animals, all deferred to the cats when hissed at and slapped across the face the first time. If the dog was eating and the cat walked over to see what was in the dish, the dog would always step aside, going back to the food when the cat had sniffed and moved on. Even though the dogs were all large enough that the cat could have been a snack, the cat ruled and the dog drooled......
A few years ago, it was decided that our current pets would be the last we would have. The reasons were many.
First off, the children were graduating high school and moving out, so there was really no need to have a dog to protect them when they got home from school any more. Then there was the fact that we love to go camping, and it was getting harder as well as more expensive to find pet sitters to come in and care for the cat when we were away. There was also the fact that we had a husky/collie at the time, so a long ride to a camp site always resulted in me being unable to move once we arrived because my legs had been put to sleep by 85 pounds of dog leaning on me for the whole ride so that he sniff out the window. When the dog, Bear, and the Maine Coon cat, Tiger, both developed cancers, eventually leading us to having to euthanize them both within two months of each other, we were heartbroken, but stuck by the idea that it was better to not have any pets than have a pet who was staying home alone all the time while we worked. The only pet still living in the house technically belonged to our daughter, who had brought a little Shih Tzu/Pomeranian mix back with her when she moved back home from New York City.
But then our daughter moved to an apartment where she couldn't have a dog. Pookah, who had moved in with us shortly before the loss of Tiger and Bear, needed a temporary place until his mama could get settled into an apartment where he could live. She soon discovered that was harder said than done, and since my husband, who has never liked small dogs, had decided that Pookah wasn't half bad for an ankle-biter, we offered to keep him with us on a more permanent basis. Small enough to not cause the same problems as Bear when we went camping, Pookah has adapted to spending a lot of time alone.....
until recently......
Once again, our daughter has moved into a situation that won't allow her to take along the cat she now has - at least for a couple of months. Her roommate, who has two cats, also needed a temporary place for her animals. Rather than make them bring the cats to a shelter to hope the boys would still be there when they could take them back, we've opened our home - and noticed that phenomenon of pecking order again.
Meeko, the youngest of the cats and the most mischievous, noticed that, whenever I've brought Pookah to visit his "mama", Pookah got very nervous about the cat (mostly because of Tiger, who was 18 pounds and much bigger than the tiny puppy who first moved in with us. Tiger terrorized the poor puppy). Meeko has been using this to his advantage over the past few days that they've all been in the same house. Pookah, even though he growls to try to keep some control, will defer to the cat 99.9% of the time. Moses, who looks just like Meeko, has been starting to discover that Pookah will back down despite the growling. The only one who hasn't figured out yet that the noises the dog makes are mostly bluff is Thomas, who is blind on one side and a little more skittish because of it. I give Thomas about another week or so before he comes to the conclusion that the cats rule this house........
So, I don't know about other people's homes, but in this house, cats rule, dogs drool, and the humans just need to make sure everyone is well fed and petted when desired....
I wonder how I can use this in a book???
this reminds me of a video i saw on youtube a couple of months ago about dogs that were scared of cats. it was hilarious.
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