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If only they could talk.
Every morning, I feed the four-legged crew. It took all of three days of Daylight Savings Time for them to catch on to us having fooled them, ever so briefly, into letting me sleep a few extra minutes. Tasha, the older dog, is almost always the first; starting with a whine/cry falling just within that hereditary range of a baby's cry that is humanly impossible to sleep through. That had been coming as early as 5 a.m. before the clocks changed; now it's pretty damn close to being back to 5:30 or even earlier.
If Michelle the middle cat has breached the perimeter, she'll be the next to the battle. Her weapons include incessant meowing, marching all around the room knocking over as much as is felinely possible, and blocking my view of the alarm clock, thereby depriving me of the chance to see if it's justified to shoo her by virtue of being True Ridiculous o'clock at that point.
Somehow, 5:40 a.m. has become my over-under for surrender. If I merely arise and sit at my desk, checking email and such, they settle down a bit, but never to the point where I can actually hold them off for more than 15 minutes, tops. So out I go to play the morning round of Five Against One.
Ebony, the younger of the dogs, is also the mellowest of the bunch. She only wants to be let out into the yard first, and then to be let back in (barking and whirling-dirvishing against the glass of the back door if I'm not there to do it), but after that she can go hours without complaint. I let her out and attend to the youngest of them all, Zoey. She was the runt of her litter and learned to forage for food like a total madwoman. She has to be crated once her bowl is filled, lest she filch off everyone else. When she finishes, she lets out a trillish mew that is adorable and painfully irresistable all at the same time.
Tasha, the primary instigator of the whole business, sits quietly this whole time, long as I do not leave her sight. If I do, she will bark enough to be heard in downtown Cleveland. So I dispense hers, while waiting for Ebony to come in. Recently, I've managed to choreograph this part almost perfectly, so both dog bowls are full and ready for delivery by the time she comes in. Complicating it, though, is that the oldest cat Tazzer has taken to raiding the dog food bowls, which is not good for him and rather unfair to them, since they don't get access to his food (at least, um, not in its unprocessed form;). By putting down the dog bowls literally as I'm shooing the two cats down the stairs, we achieve some semblance of species equity here.
Finally, after about 8,000 meows, a second can of Nine Lives is split into two 4½-life segments, and the two of them are made temporarily happy, usually just in time for Tasha to finish her food, sniff every other food-bearing surface within a mile, and be at the back door demanding to be let out.
So far, so good. In theory, I can now return to the arms of Morpheus. Lately, though, it's become more complicated.
----
Tasha has taken to pacing the floor for close to an hour after she's come back in after the morning feeding and everyone else has resumed their sleepy positions. I have no idea what she's after, or what's causing her to want to be after it. The rest of the day, including after she eats at night, she tends to find a perch and lie in/on it. Increasingly in the evening hours, she demands more trips to the back yard, but she can go hours during the day when we're not home, and almost nightly goes from 10 p.m. until the morning mooch without blinking an eyelash, so I don't think it's physiological.
It doesn't seem to matter whether we've walked her, whether Emily is home or not, or what other variables might be varying. It's getting to be a wear on the grumpy old man who gets to play Carlton Her Doorman, though, and when I take her for shots and such sometime next week, I'll see if the vet can get any good dog-whispering in that might explain or solve it.
----
As for the Tufts part, well, bless Eleanor for just sweeping and vacuuming the floors here. That just caused the untimely deaths of another several dozen Tribbles.
Every morning, I feed the four-legged crew. It took all of three days of Daylight Savings Time for them to catch on to us having fooled them, ever so briefly, into letting me sleep a few extra minutes. Tasha, the older dog, is almost always the first; starting with a whine/cry falling just within that hereditary range of a baby's cry that is humanly impossible to sleep through. That had been coming as early as 5 a.m. before the clocks changed; now it's pretty damn close to being back to 5:30 or even earlier.
If Michelle the middle cat has breached the perimeter, she'll be the next to the battle. Her weapons include incessant meowing, marching all around the room knocking over as much as is felinely possible, and blocking my view of the alarm clock, thereby depriving me of the chance to see if it's justified to shoo her by virtue of being True Ridiculous o'clock at that point.
Somehow, 5:40 a.m. has become my over-under for surrender. If I merely arise and sit at my desk, checking email and such, they settle down a bit, but never to the point where I can actually hold them off for more than 15 minutes, tops. So out I go to play the morning round of Five Against One.
Ebony, the younger of the dogs, is also the mellowest of the bunch. She only wants to be let out into the yard first, and then to be let back in (barking and whirling-dirvishing against the glass of the back door if I'm not there to do it), but after that she can go hours without complaint. I let her out and attend to the youngest of them all, Zoey. She was the runt of her litter and learned to forage for food like a total madwoman. She has to be crated once her bowl is filled, lest she filch off everyone else. When she finishes, she lets out a trillish mew that is adorable and painfully irresistable all at the same time.
Tasha, the primary instigator of the whole business, sits quietly this whole time, long as I do not leave her sight. If I do, she will bark enough to be heard in downtown Cleveland. So I dispense hers, while waiting for Ebony to come in. Recently, I've managed to choreograph this part almost perfectly, so both dog bowls are full and ready for delivery by the time she comes in. Complicating it, though, is that the oldest cat Tazzer has taken to raiding the dog food bowls, which is not good for him and rather unfair to them, since they don't get access to his food (at least, um, not in its unprocessed form;). By putting down the dog bowls literally as I'm shooing the two cats down the stairs, we achieve some semblance of species equity here.
Finally, after about 8,000 meows, a second can of Nine Lives is split into two 4½-life segments, and the two of them are made temporarily happy, usually just in time for Tasha to finish her food, sniff every other food-bearing surface within a mile, and be at the back door demanding to be let out.
So far, so good. In theory, I can now return to the arms of Morpheus. Lately, though, it's become more complicated.
----
Tasha has taken to pacing the floor for close to an hour after she's come back in after the morning feeding and everyone else has resumed their sleepy positions. I have no idea what she's after, or what's causing her to want to be after it. The rest of the day, including after she eats at night, she tends to find a perch and lie in/on it. Increasingly in the evening hours, she demands more trips to the back yard, but she can go hours during the day when we're not home, and almost nightly goes from 10 p.m. until the morning mooch without blinking an eyelash, so I don't think it's physiological.
It doesn't seem to matter whether we've walked her, whether Emily is home or not, or what other variables might be varying. It's getting to be a wear on the grumpy old man who gets to play Carlton Her Doorman, though, and when I take her for shots and such sometime next week, I'll see if the vet can get any good dog-whispering in that might explain or solve it.
----
As for the Tufts part, well, bless Eleanor for just sweeping and vacuuming the floors here. That just caused the untimely deaths of another several dozen Tribbles.