Conversations in our house..

These are recent conversations in the GB house (between the 2 grown-up humans who live here):

"What happened to the paper towel?"
"La Doof Kitton"
"oh. Why?"
"because he's a *expletive deleted because we try to be PG around here*. Apparently he just plain got pissy and managed to get on the counter last night, pull the roll of toweling off of the holder, and take it to the living room. Where he shredded it"
*La Doof Kitton strolls into the room*
"what did towels ever do to YOU?"
*he looks at us, jumps onto the counter where he isn't allowed, makes a claw-swipe at the towels, and then runs to the basement*
"bastard."
^I could add names to who said what but...I think it's interchangeable for us on this one. You can assume the EXACT same conversation was repeated about what happened to the stuff in my work bag I left on the kitchen table recently.

-----
Conversation at 4 am
Me: "what's that noise?"
Mr G: "what noise?"
*rustling noise*
Me: "That noise"
*Horrible crash followed by skittering of claws/paws and baby crying from scary noises*
Me: "I got the baby, you figure out what La Doof Kitton has"
*Mr G. walks into the nursery where I'm comforting/feeding Buffy*
Mr G: "I forgot to put the cookies into the Kitton proof box. But I brought you a cookie!" *sharing cookie*
Me, to La Doof Kitton: "You know you're a bastard"
La Doof Kitton: *looks smug*
Me:

in which La Doof Kitton feeds Dawg more things

wow, I'm an incredibly negligent blogger again. Sorry.

So, twice in the last week, La Doof Kitton fed things to dog.

1-The cheese wrapper
I was having a bout of insomnia. It happens from time to time and usually results in me prowling around the house in the half-darkness and making enough noise to wake up Mr. G and I generally make a pest of myself.
Well, I got hungry while pacing and grabbed a piece of string cheese from the fridge. Because I was pacing I absent-mindedly dropped the wrapper to said piece of string-cheese in the trash can off the kitchen--the one w/o a lid.

The next morning, I realized that Dawg was acting like she had something she wasn't supposed to. I couldn't see anything and I looked and assumed she was acting 'guilty' for some other reason.
But when I went to leave the house, I realized that tiny trash can was knocked over.

I KNOW Dawg didn't go and knock over that trash can because she can't go across the tile and down the step into onto the landing. (okay, maybe she CAN but she won't. Linoleum = lava and stairs in the house = impenetrable barrier). And I know El Gato didn't do it because she actually spent the night in bed with me.
Which means...(dun dun dun)...La Doof Kitton knocked over the trash can, pulled out the cheese wrapper, and brought it somewhere for Dawg to take from him.

(and the good ending is, that made me remember that I had indeedy put a cheese wrapper in there at 4 am. And so I knew what I was looking for. And I retrieved the cheese wrapper before Dawg ingested it--which is MUCH more pleasant than retrieving it after she has ingested it.)

2-The shirt
I have quite a few of what are commonly, in this house, called 'chore coats'. You know, those lined flannel shirts that you wear out to the barn (no, we don't have a barn) to do chores? Most of mine were stolen from my dad (sorry dad) over the years and they live in the front coat closet to grab whenever you need something warmer than just a flannel but not so 'nice' as a Carhartt.

Well, at some unGodly hour like 4am (do you notice how often these things happen at 4 am? why do pets not need things more often at noon? or even 10 pm), it was my turn to take Dawg out when she decided she had an 'emergency' need to go out. I grabbed a chore coat and her leash, headed out into the pouring rain, and tossed the chore coat on the back of a kitchen chair to dry when I came back in.

The next morning, I tried to put Dawg outside and she informed me that, no, she didn't need to go out. Not only had she 'already gone' (at 4 am) but it was still raining...why would she want to go out in that? So I left the animals to their own devices --with El Gato and La Doof Kitton playing "pick in your sibling" and "you can't see me through this cloth--let me hit you while you can't see me" through the chore coat on the back of the chair--while I went about my day.

A while later, I see the coat on the floor and think nothing of it--the cats do tend to knock things over when they play the above games. I also saw Dawg considering laying on the coat--she loves napping on our clothing and while this is one of my nicest chore coats (or, one of dad's nicest chore coats--sorry dad), it wasn't something I cared if she napped on.

Even LATER, Mr. G walked into the room and said "Well Dawg, don't you look all....wait, why are you eating mom's coat?"

Remember I said these are coats you take for chores? well....walking Dawg is a chore. And so, apparently, a long LONG time ago, I filled the breast pocket of the chore coat with dog cookies (we love having pocket sized cookies around).

And...since Dawg isn't quite smart enough to get inside the pocket (the pocket was NOT buttoned. There is a 'flap' but the pocket was plenty big enough to fit a nose into...) she did the next logical thing...she ate the pocket.

So this is no longer one of my 'nicest' chore coats. It's now the one with a giant hole in the left breast. (sorry dad!).
Dawg looked so very disappointed when she realized I was going to take away her new treat-dispensing-bed...but she was thrilled that, upon me grabbing the coat and picking it up, her handiwork came to fruition--since there was no longer a bottom to the pocket, all the crumbs of doggie cookie scattered all over the floor for her to lap up.

Mr. G found this funnier than I did for some reason :-P

Treat time!

Treat time, in the G house, is interesting.

There are 2 treat-times per day--first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

They are always interesting moments because each pet in the house would rather have the treats belonging to the OTHER pets than his or her own treats.

The morning treats started when someone (no idea who) needed medication in the morning--'spoonful of sugar' (or in our house, a bit of dog biscuit or a piece of pounce [yes, pounce is nasty stuff.  Reading the ingredients make me gag.  But we've yet to find a treat that they will eat that isn't nasty]) and all that.  And apparently we are quite guilty of over-anthropomorphising our animals, so we can't give one a treat without giving treats to the other two.  Morning treats are a pretty easy; put Dawg outside, give cats treats (to be expanded upon re: nighttime), give Dawg a treat when she comes back in.

Evening treats started as a way to convince Dawg into her crate at bedtime (she has since graduated but knows the command "bedtime!" means she should find her bed and be behind the baby gate) and is a bit more challenging.  I say "bedtime" and the cats head toward the kitchen for their treats and Dawg heads toward the bedroom.  I throw Dawg a biscuit and 90% of the time, that's where it ends.  The other 10% of the time, La Doof Kitton decides that he would much rather have Dawg's biscuit than wait for his treat and throws himself between Dawg and her biscuit--a rather dangerous place to be when the rightful owner of the biscuit weighs 5 times more than the kitton.  

On those nights, La Doof Kitton gets bowled over and there is much chasing and havoc before Dawg finishes her biscut--the nights following, Dawg is MUCH more alert and proactive.  (and you would think I could stop this by giving La Doof Kitton his treat before Dawg gets hers but that simply results in Dawg eating all the kitteh treats AND her cookie--that pesky 'weighs 5 x' bit comes in handy for her on occasion)

La Doof Kitton wolfs down his treat every night and then tries to eat El Gato's treat.  You wouldn't know it to look at El Gato and her *ahem* Rubenesque figure, but El Gato is a picky eater--she must sniff fully and ensure that something passes her inspection before she can eat it (her weight problems are likely caused by the fact that, in spite of inspecting carefully, I've almost never seen a particle of food fail her inspection.  After 10 minutes of sniffing, she eats it,  regardless of what it is).  The obvious solution to this would seem to be to give El Gato her treat first so she can finish inspecting and have it eaten before La Doof Kitton gets to it...but that fails--La Doof Kitton is to speedy.  

The solution is to stand in the kitchen and get out two cat treats every night--then to take one treat and hurl it somewhere as far away and as inconveniently accessed as possible.  This thrown treat is La Doof Kitton's treat.  It never occurs to him to wait for the 'easy access' treat to be put down in front of him, he can't resist the chance to stalk the treat into an out-of-the-way location.

So while La Doof Kitton retrieves his treat from behind the couch/on top of the TV stand/tumbling down the basement stairs/under the door to the hall closet, El Gato watches him run off, and sits, with her tail patiently wrapped around her feet.  And I set the second treat in front of El Gato.  She inspects (her inspections *have* gotten shorter since we added the kitton) it and eats it; usually finishing it before La Doof Kitton returns victorious from his hunt.

Enter last night...

when we opened the kitteh treat container to see ONE lonely kitteh treat.

We considered our options and, watching La Doof Kitton do his darnedest to steal Dawg's biscuit, decided that was the easiest.  We gave Dawg her biscuit.  We gave El Gato that last kitteh treat.  And we handed another Dawg biscuit to La Doof Kitton.

He sniffed it carefully.  He looked at us.  He sniffed the biscuit again.  He looked a bit offended.  He sniffed the biscuit again.  He looked at us  with the look of "is this a trick?  I'm not allowed these, they're Dawg's" showing through...which is when it occurred to him that he wasn't allowed to have these.  Suddenly, the value of this 'forbidden' treat dawned on him.  He snatched it away and disappeared into the basement and I could almost hear the evil cackle as he gloated over Dawg's biscuit being his.

I hope he ate it but I have a sneaking suspicion he hid it to tease Dawg with it tomorrow.