La Doof Kitton, being himself, decided to make sure that we were grumpy immediately when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed.
I woke up, took down the baby gate to release the hound, and stumbled to the kitchen to turn on the teakettle. I suddenly realized that the contents of 3 bookshelves wasn't supposed to be lying in the living room floor; the 'basket of odds and ends' (which contains hair clips and car keys and brushes and pet toenail clippers and is 4 shelves up to be as close to out of reach as possible) was upside down and odds and ends littered the floor, books were on their sides and all around the room, nick-knacks and toys were strewn across the carpet. All in all, it looked like a small, Tasmanian devil sized tornado had hit or that a mischievous kitten had spent half the night pushing things off the shelves and watching them bounce across the floor. I'm guessing Taz didn't do it.
(Let me interrupt myself here to mention that, since I've become a responsible grown-up (ha! funny) my toys have gotten more and more expensive. And more and more breakable. So my 'action figures' have been replaced by miniatures; my glass bits have been replaced with wee antiques; my thrift-store paperbacks have been supplemented with (er, not replaced :-) with lovely leather bound editions, etc. This increases my irritation when my belongings are attacked. Everyone knows this, which is why no one messes w/ the thrift store paperbacks and everyone messes with the first edition antiques)
I decide that the fewer pets who are around to 'help' when I'm picking this up, the better. So I go to the door to let Dawg out but stop when I realize that she is begging to go outside to play with a toy. It's not her toy; actually, it's not even my toy. It's a miniature of a monster that Mr. G has taken the job of painting for a friend. Nothing like thinking the dog has a hair clip and realizing that it's something closer to this--and that for extra fun, someone has already put a lot of time and effort into it and it doesn't belong to us:
(No, it wasn't this. This is one we photographed at games day a few years ago painted by someone w/ a lot of talent. I'm an almost adequate painter. Mr. G is a very good painter. The guy who painted that was stupendous)
I immediately switched into "talk them off the ledge" mode; I convinced Dawg to, very gently, lay the wee squid-looking miniature critter into my hand in exchange for a dog biscut. Then I shoved her outside with said biscut as I inspected the miniature. It had not been crushed in the "Jaws of Doom"--small miracle. And the paint was, for the most part, unchipped. Which lead me to wonder where on earth Dawg had found this treasured little monster
Dawg is a destructive force of nature but she doesn't act on her own; the monsters had been secured out of La Doof Kitton's reach in the kitchen...or actually, NOT out of his reach in the kitchen, although we thought they were. Mr. G and I spent the next 40 minutes looking for the other missing miniatures and finding them, eventually, in one piece under the couch. These have now been secured in a locking case in the basement (in the boarded up room).
Everything is back on the respective shelves, and I told La Doof Kitton that finding the pet nailclippers in the middle of the floor is what reminded me that he needed his claws trimmed--here's hoping that he won't choose to remind me of them again this way.
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