Wild, Wild Life

[captainsblog]

It's been quite the weekend for the four-legged set around here- some activities, some memories.

Saturday began, a bit earlier than I would have liked it to, with our dogs barking up a storm. I was vaguely awake and went in search of the cause. Shut up, girls, I barked back at them, there's nothing out there to....

Oh. Wait. There is.

Neighbors of ours from around the corner have a boxer-mixish looking dog named Sooner. Like our own Ebony, he's loud but ultimately sweet. He wandered over here a few years ago when we had only Tasha (his chain dragging behind him after he ripped the other end out of the tree it was nailed into), and we took care of him for a few hours until Mommy and Daddy came home. This time, knowing where he lived, Emily and I herded him back home and into his house. A sliding door was open just a little, enough for him to get out, and we weren't sure if he'd gotten out of the yard by accident (they have an Invisible Fence which was doing Invisible Good) or wasn't supposed to be out at all.

When we checked an hour or so later, it turned out to be the latter, and they were very grateful for our help, which we, like any lover of the four-paw set, were more than happy to provide. They gave Em a ton of paperbacks to fend off her summer boredom- a nice ending to a story of a father and daughter just trying to help out a friend.

----

In between our two visits to their yard, our neighbor on their side stopped me. She'd put out a humane trap in her yard to catch what she suspected to be a vegetable-eating little rabbit, but as usually happens around here when traps are set, the entirely wrong species wound up being bagged. Our other neighbors' woodchuck trap yielded a raccoon, while Betty's bunny trap wound up containing one of Mama Woodchuck's babies.

Animal Control came and hauled it off, and the truck was just back an hour ago, but this time it was just to return the empty trap. It's getting so wild around here we all have the game warden on speed dial.

----

Today, on the other hand, I was awakened only by our own domestic animals- by the real ones, but also by powerful memories of the first of them to have passed on.

Over on bluesilverkdg's journal, there's an entry, and the inevitable poll, about the age-old dilemma that used to drive Ann Landers totally bonkers with the volume of mail she got over it: Does the toilet paper go on the roller with the paper up over the top or down under the bottom?

I thought I would be unique and smartassish in my instant gut reply: What is this "roller" of which you speak?

For you see, we've had cats for close to 20 years, and to one of that species, a hanging roll of toilet paper, however the paper is positioned, is nothing more than a cheap form of entertainment.  By the time I posted that as my essential answer, no fewer than a half dozen of Kimmy's Friends had already chimed in with the same observation.

But in the never-ending quest to remain original, I did remind myself, and then her, and now you: one of our original kitties, Bozo, was the best at this game, and that somewhere I had the pictures to prove it.

For your dining and shredding pleasure:


This is from our last house in Rochester, not long after we moved in, which would make this picture circa 1990 and the boy about a year old. He hasn't discovered his mission in life yet, but don't worry: one picture along,....

... he did.

It'll be three years without him next month, and we'd shred all the Charmin in the world to have him back for one more headbutt and hairball. We did get one more memory of him during the weekend, though: on the way to a picnic with some friends Saturday afternoon, we passed this billboard for Fresh Step litter:

Comments

[bluesilverkdg.livejournal.com]

Wow, he did a very efficient job of shredding it while it was still ON the roll! Misty prefers to cover the entire floor (and then, I believe, roll in it.) Did you ever catch him doing it? I never could figure out how Misty could do such a complete job, but I finally caught her in the act one time. She was standing with her hind legs on the toilet, front paws on the roller, spinning and shredding like a madcat.

But like you said, once they're gone, I'd give any amount of...anything to have them back again. I used to get so frustrated at some of the things that Dexter did, but if I could have him back on earth, I'd never fuss at him again. OK, that's a lie probably...but I would definitely appreciate him a lot more.

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

Our kitties don't care about toiler paper, but now PAPER TOWELS...that's FUN!

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

My first thought on seeing the picture and the title was, "who's wearing fur pajamas, then?" But I suppose that's pretty predictable.

Then I started writing about one of our cats but it grew and now it's going to be a post of its own.