mmm, cat treats.

Every morning and every evening, the pets in the G household get treats.

Some people think we spoil our pets.  Really, we just want to ake sure none of them have done anything incredibly stupid--giving treats is how we eliminate reduce the odds that one of the critters spends the night/day on a shelf locked in the linen closet, in the dryer, locked outside, trapped in the garage, etc.

For those who don't know, Buffy recently became mobile.  She doesn't crawl but she does a scooting that moves her faster than her parents realise.
This makes feeding the pets in the morning extra challenging.  Remember the old 'items and a boat' (The Simpsons do it best, but I suppose the traditional 'fox, goose, bag o' beans' is more classic)?  It's like that.  Buffy wants to steal the treats/hug/otherwise bother all the pets.  Dawg wants to steal the treats of all the cats.  The cats won't EAT Dawg's treats, but wll bother the bejeebes out of her.  La Doof Kitton tries to steal El Gato's treats and El Gato is the world's slowest eater.  You have 1 high chair and 3 pets in the living room...

Normally, I put Buff in her high chair while arranging all of this--because of the above mentioned issues.  This particular day, I forgot.  I put Buffy down on the kitchen floor, went in the living room where I gave El Gato her treats and, on the other end of the living room (closer to the kitchen) gave La Doof Kitton his treats.  Then I gave Dawg HER treats in the hallway, after dragging her away from stealing El Gato's treats.

At that moment, I see Buffy scooting her wee butt across the living room with a look on her face that resembles a cat that ate the canary.  It looks closer to 'the baby who ate the cat treat' though and I realise that La Doof Kitton looks PIIIIISSSSSED.

I pick up Buffy, take her to the kitchen were I have better lighting, and pry her mouth open.  I stick a finger in (which promptly gets bitten) and 'finger sweep' until the Pounce treat, now resembling chicken-flavored-play dough, falls on the floor.  El Gato appears, sniffs it...and eats it.  La Doof Kitton glowers from the corner and Buffy screams that I took away 'her' treat.
I consider telling El Gato that it belongs to La Doof Kitton, but I figure that he has stolen a gazillion of El Gato's treats in the past few years, he deserves to loose this one.

I think La Doof Kitton is having to learn hard lessons about the new pecking order--and so am I.  Buffy must be in the high chair when treating pets.

Flowers for the Kitton

Buffy is learning how to 'fish for kittons":

You start with appropriate 'bait'.  Flags are excellent

Then you wave the bait around a lot.

It helps if you do this for the 'right' kitteh.  El Gato is not interested in flags when they are attached to loud, moving Buffy.

Eventually, the kitton, who has been waiting, just out of reach for ages, will be unable to resist and will come barreling out of nowhere to attack the bait.

Do you remember "Who framed Roger Rabbit"?  Where they tap 'shave and a hair cut' and the poor rabbit is trying DESPERATELY not to come bursting out but eventually can't stop himself?  Yep.  It looks a lot like that.
Buffy LOVES it when she finally wins.

You can also fish using a flower on a stick

Lookout behind you!  Lasers!

just a photo-update of the pets and their new addition....

I apologize if the pictures aren't great--do you have any idea how hard it is to herd cats and Dawg and a baby into one frame?   THis is what we have though:



Defeated by kitteh!





Confused by how this happened...

 


Even the big Kitteh loves toys!  Kinda.




La Doof Kitton mostly likes the strings.  And stealing toys from babies.
Baby is learning how to use strings to 'fish for kittehs'



Dawgs get in trouble for stealing toys so they just have to settle for
stealing Boppy pillows.

La Doof Kitton keeps trying to feed himself to the baby.  Not quite sure why :)

They say cats aren't capable of plitting revenge......

They lie.

Earlier this week, the family had a morning with some family togetherness.  I was sitting in the rocking chair, feeding Buffy.  Mr. G was sitting on the ottoman next to us, and the pets were busy doing their thing.

Mr. G brought me a bagel because he's a nice guy and I had a migraine.  However, because I had a migraine, after a few bites, I had to move the bagel out of 'smell range' for a few; I asked him to set it on the nursery night-stand, just out of reach while we finished planning our day.

A moment later a small white and gray paw appeared over the top of the night stand.  Remember those cartoons where a cat (Sylvester) is under the table and his paw walks to the food?  Yep, just like that.  There was a claw trying desperately to hook my bagel.

Mr. G was quick on the draw and snagged the plate o' bagel out of reach and then made several comments about winning the battle, cats not being able to take over the world because they don't have opposable  thumbs, and 'HA, no bagel for you!'.  And then we went back to planning our day.

Quick as thought, La Doof Kitton appeared on the night stand.  The Mr. repeated a comment about "ha, see, no bagel for you; I have it here".  La Doof Kitton walked across where the bagel had been, over to my rather heavy water bottle, and head butted it.  Hard.

There was a slow motion sequence as the water bottle tipped, fell and spiraled downward...with the heavy part of the base landing square on the bony part of the Mr.'s bare foot.

Buffy woke up because I was laughing so hard I cried (sorry.  yes, I'm a jerk).  The Mr. actually fell off the ottoman in pain (Dawg promptly rushed over to help lick him off and El Gato got panicky and ran away).
La Doof Kitton spent a few moments looking smug before dropping off the night stand walking over to where the plate o' bagel was on the floor (the Mr, in his pain, had set it down/dropped it), and commencing to lick off the butter.

La Doof Kitton 1, humans 0

Dawg does not go on a trip...

Earlier this week, Mr. G took Buffy with him on a short trip.
He packed the baby into her car seat and headed out to the garage...

Now, Buffy is *almost* worth coming across the 'lava' (that is, the tile) for.  Some days, Dawg will brave the lava just so sneak in one more lick of the "puppy's" toes. (please note, this is always problematic because while Buffy is incentive worth braving all the way across the lava for, there's no incentive to make Dawg act brave BACK to the safety of carpet.  So Dawg could spend considerable amount of time 1-trapped 2-scrambling in a panic across the floor [because the faster she moves away from the lava, the less it hurts--at least that's what she thinks.  Unfortunately, the more she scrambles, the more likely she is to pop her knee back out of joint.  again.] or 3-being helped across the floor either by a grown-up in the house touching her shoulder all the way back to safety (or, on occasion, carrying her) or by laying towels across the floor.  #3 tends to be the most common option).

A car trip is also *almost* worth coming across the lava for.  (the adults in the house are sometimes almost worth it but usually, we're chopped liver.  Or more accurately we're significantly less interesting than chopped liver because Dawg is fond of chopped liver)

So when Dawg saw Mr. G headed for a car trip WITH Buffy, it was clearly worth flinging herself across the lava for...Dawg flung herself to the safety of the landing.
Unfortunately, this wasn't a Dawg-friendly trip and Dawg could not be coxed back across the kitchen (lava!  and besides, that would move her AWAY from Buffy and the car--why would anyone move away from Buffy or the car, ever?) so the Mr. set Buffy down, picked up Dawg and deposited her back onto the carpet.

Dawg was not standing for this--she braved lava and everything, how dare she be cheated out of her car trip with Buffy!  So she started edging herself out onto the lava again...she made it as far as sliding herself under the kitchen table (Mr. G was trying to get out the door before this
At that moment, Buffy cried. 


The cry startled Dawg who jumped.  The jump knocked over a chair.  The chair hit the floor with a loud BANG.  The bang made Buffy SCREAM (this would be an upgrade, er downgrade?  from cry--the pets are bothered by scream a lot more than they are bothered by cry).  The scream set la Doof Kitton (who had been stalking Dawg) into motion...his tail went puffy and his legs pulled off that scooby-doo move where the feet move frantically at a speed beyond belief...and the animal goes nowhere.
The Scooby-ing La Doof Kitton knocked over a 2nd chair.
The second chair startled Buffy out of her scream and she went quiet and alert.
And at that, La Doof Kitton got his footing and launched himself away--not quite sure where he went, but he pouted for most of the rest of the day.

Poor Dawg was utterly confused by all of this. And she was, again, carried to safety.
And didn't go on a trip.
But for some reason, I think Dawg came closer to winning than La Doof Kitton did--serves him right for stalking Melvin-the-tail-of-the-Dawg across the lava.

(and, La Doof Kitton just came over, stepped on the mouse, and closed the window I was typing this post in.  Thank goodness for autosave)

I am a very bad blogger, but, YAY, updates

For being a lousy blogger, I am sorry.

Problem being that, recently, I've had some stories to tell but I didn't think I wanted to jump into telling them without making a 'returning/announcement' post--which I haven't had time to make (so I'm hacking it out while on a lunch break)

That and I said I'd not post until I finished writing thank-you notes. (No, I haven't finished. I happen to have a BORING meeting for work this weekend that I plan to finish them during. Sorry Aunt Gertrude, the interwebz have spoken).

So, on to the announcement.
YES, the pets have a human sibling. She was born Sept. 2 and is wonderful. Everything went well and we're thrilled. (and online, her handle remains 'Buffy')

Dawg is in love. Absolute love. This new 'puppy' is her main concern in life. I worried the first few weeks about her level of exhaustion because she was guarding the baby and if I was awake w/ the baby (which was most of the time), she was awake and watching me be awake w/ the baby.
Heck, when the baby was on the floor, Dawg made an effort to nurse her (yes, really). There is no doubt that this child will be very spoiled with dog affection--the only 'problem' we have is excessive affection ("Dawg, leave her alone, the baby is clean", etc)--the sort of problem that I know other pet owners would pay good money to have.

The cats are wary but interested and no longer scared. El Gato and the baby have 'conversations' that go like this:
Meow
coo-gurgle-eh
meow
eh ugh, grunt
meow
coo
me...I'm done.

So, the story of Buffy meeting the pets.
Once we found out I was being induced, things happened fast. We got home and Mr. G called 'Uncle D'--a friend of his who is our pet-sitter and home-looker-after-er (who all the pets adore), to ask if he could pet-sit. We got the answer of 'er, uhm. No. You see, I'll be down the hall where my sister is having her c-section. I can let them out at some point but, no, not really".
Best laid plans and all that--we got Uncle D and the grandparents to take shifts so that the pets weren't locked away for extended periods of time.
Then there was labor that looked remarkably unlike TV shows. Then there was Buffy and much rejoycing.

A nurse reminded us to send home the wee-hat-that-makes-her-look-like-a-gnome for the pets to sniff; the Mr. took it home and then realized that, since labor looks remarkably unlike TV shows, the excessive interest Dawg had in the hat was focused on the area where there was blood. ew.

But we got ready to go home and decided to spread out the attentions--I kept the pets with me whie the Mr. went into the nursery and closed the screen door (the screen door was put up to control the pet entrances/exits while we get things sorted out--we still use it because La Doof Kitton likes ot reach between crib bars and pat at the mattress and if he wakes her at 4 am, so help me Cuthulu, I will call down curses on him)...

I walked to the screened doorway to see what was happening, Buffy made a small cry...and in that instant El Gato removed herself into some sort of hiding, which is where she spent the next 24ish hours. La Doof Kitton CLIMBED the screen door to the top to try to get in and see--I turned my head and was looking, eye level, at cat-butt. Dawg tried to claw through the door and successfully made an impressive gash in the screen.

We decided keeping pets and baby separated was causing more trouble than it saved us, so I gave up and opened the door.
La Doof Kitton approached the crying bundle, sniffed and then the baby moved and La Doof Kitton lost his bravery and joined El Gato in hiding.
Dawg? well, Dawg put a paw on the side of the crib, climbed up and looked in.  THen she decided to stand guard and for the next 45 minutes, it looked like this:

That's the best picture we have because Dawg's tail is an absolute BLUR in the rest of them.

So the stories of the G household will now have an extra person.  And I fully expect Dawg to continue being confused about her role with the 'puppy'.
But La Doof Kitton and El Gato have gotten braver and they're willing to sniff Buffy and to be in the same room with her (La Doof Kitton will even try to get into the same lap).
ANd we can now return to regularly scheduled blogging :)