The Cat

 The cat, who doesn't have an official name, is a dumb-as-a-rock ginger tabby. He's over 13 years old but doesn't look or act that old. 

 I've blogged before about his ability to start yowling at 3am, letting off once every second or so, and keep it up for HOURS. He sits in the most acoustically advantageous position, the middle of the staircase, to project his desperate cries for food to all corners of the house. If I or one of the dogs even twitches, he comes running into the bedroom screaming loudly, frantic that we somehow might be having a feast behind his back. 

He has full run of the house and for the most part stays out of trouble. His usual sleeping spot is in the upstairs storage room where he has two comfy beds to choose from. But occasionally he will show up in an unexpected spot. 

Last night, as I was winding down my evening, I carried Frankie into the living room to put her in her expen so I could sit on the couch and read for a while. This is our regular routine, and Frankie usually settles down and takes a break from being Frankie. I was surprised to find the cat curled up in Frankie's expen bed. He greeted us sleepily but didn't budge. I dropped her in there anyway and sat down to see what would happen. Science!

Frankie paced, circled, stood and gazed mournfully first at the cat then at me, and paced some more. The cat didn't budge. There was some sighing and a lot more pacing. I said nothing to either of them. With a final sad little sigh, Frankie curled up next to the bed on a bit of blanket. She didn't even get up when I went to refill my wine glass and grab my phone to take this picture.

 

Despite the fearsome prey drive and general pushiness of the terriers, I think it's clear who's in charge here.

 

CircusK9: File Under "Never A Dull Moment"

Hijinks and hilarity are the rule, not the exception, at CircusK9. I have two stories to illustrate and amuse. 

The first story is about Archie. He loves to play--he plays with the cat, with Azza, with his toys, with me. When I am studying, he brings me toys one by one, hoping that maybe this one will entice me to play since the one he brought me five minutes earlier did not. I've written before about looking up from my books and notes and computer to find myself surrounded by a sea of dog toys, so many that I have to move them out of the way to move my chair. 

Often when he is super stimulated during toy play, he carries his toys into Azza's or Mimi's crate, or to the two dog beds by my study area. He proceeds to ruck up the bedding, vigorously pulling it up and back with his front paws, with the general aim of burying his treasure within. He can completely turn over all of the bedding in the process, and in the case of the dog beds, move them several feet across the room. He will also bury his antlers like this. So every morning, while the dogs are eating breakfast, I go around to all the crates and dog beds to straighten out the bedding and remove all of Archie's stashed toys and antlers. 

The other morning while I was straightening up the dog things, I was completely taken aback to find this:

That is a picture of an antler and a plush toy carefully placed on the cat's scratching box. In case you are thinking, "pfft, carefully placed--that was just an accident", I will tell you that I removed them and a different antler and two different toys were on the scratching box the next morning. Archie deliberately stashed his treasure there.

There are several levels of silliness here. I have no idea why Archie gets so much pleasure out of burying his toys--he never retrieves them so I think it is the act of moving everything around that he likes. He never puts toys in his own crate. The terriers regularly take snoozes in any available crate or bed, but they absolutely know which crate is theirs. While the cat doesn't use a crate, Archie sees him use the scratch box every day. I can only assume that Archie logically translated this as "cat's special place, good for stashing treasure." Makes perfect sense.

The second story is about Archie and the cat. I don't free-feed Beast--every meal is measured out. Thus he is convinced that he will starve and blow away like a bit of fluff, and he is constantly, and loudly, on the lookout for things he can eat. The compost bucket is a regular stop on his rounds although I've learned to put the lid on it when I put things like eggshells in there. He will come to the kitchen and beg just like the dogs when I am preparing dinner, although I have a low tolerance for that behavior and chase them all out after a few minutes. 

Last night, I carved out an hour to make some real food. I sliced up half a sweet onion, peeled and cubed an eggplant, and cleaned, trimmed, and cut up three chicken thighs into thumb-sized chunks (when you are in vet school, you learn that when you manage to find time to cook, you cook big, enough for several meals, because you don't know when you'll have time again). I put all of that deliciousness into a saucepan with olive oil, salt, black pepper, and basil, gave it a bit of a stir, and turned on the burner. Suddenly, and now I can't even remember exactly why, I had to run back to the bedroom for something. It seemed necessary at the time. I was only gone for a few seconds. 

I returned to the kitchen just in time to see the cat leaping off the stove with a piece of raw chicken dangling from his mouth. A piece of raw chicken he pulled directly from the heating saucepan. Little fucker. Archie was waiting below, jaws open like a crocodile--he is a very alert terrier and knows when the cat is up to something. The cat leaped over his head, hit the floor, and the chase was on. The cat was so frantic to take his treasure into the bedroom and under the bed, and Archie was so equally frantic to take the raw chicken from the cat's mouth, that they were bouncing off each other, off walls, off corners, off furniture, like pinballs. Archie was growling, the cat was growling, I was laughing so hard I could barely stand up. 

I grabbed a flashlight, ran to the bedroom (yo, a nod to earthquake preparedness here, I have flashlights stashed all over the place), and dropped to the floor to watch it all play out. I sleep on a platform bed so Archie was not as maneuverable in that low space as the cat was but he sure gave it his all. In the end, the cat managed to choke down the piece of raw chicken before Archie could take it from him. Archie had to console himself with licking up drool and juice from the floor.

Never, ever a dull moment.

I Don't Understand This

I got a new (cheap) bit of carpet to put in front of my door. The cat in particular loves to lounge on it. I guess he likes the texture. Or the smell. Maybe the color. Who knows? He's a cat. Might as well be a helium-based life-form that lives in gas giant planets like Saturn for all that I understand what motivates him (sorry, my re-reading of the most excellent sci-fi Culture series by Iain M. Banks this summer is taking over my metaphors).

I was working on my summer research project the other day when I looked over to see Archie chilling on the rug. Good, I though, that means he won't be bugging me for a few minutes at least. I worked for a few more minutes, looked over again to see Beast stretched out on top of Archie's paws. Archie didn't even bother to move and the cat was already mostly asleep.

I don't understand the relationship that Azza and Archie have with Beast. They love him. He loves them. The cat ducks in and out of various rooms, runs under the bed, and zooms behind chairs in the living room, leading them on a truly merry chase through the house. The three of them go all out for this game.

You might recall how Azza would drag the cat across the living room by his head, cat screeching the entire way but loving every minute of it. 

Imagine my astonishment last week when I walked down the hallway just in time to see Archie dragging the cat across the living room by his head. 

It's the cat. That's the only possible explanation. Somehow he has figured out how to get two dogs with extremely different temperaments play the exact same crazy games with him. 

What can one do but shrug? They are happy, healthy, and full of play and silliness.  

Diary of A First-Year Vet Student: I Thought It Would Never End

I am now about 15% of the way to being a DVM. Sounds daunting, doesn't it? Believe me, it is.

We finally finished this winter term. With no breaks or holidays since MLK day in January, which occurred during the second week, and with 4 quizzes or major exams every week of the term, many of us were getting pretty wobbly towards the end.

For our gross anatomy lab final, we had cadaver specimens of cats, dogs, ferrets, rats, chickens, pigeons, horses, and cows (just the heads of the latter two species; we'll study the rest of them next term). The written part of the final included questions on all of these species plus hamsters and gerbils.

Our microanatomy final was comprehensive for both this term and the last term. Just ponder that! Stained slides of every single tissue type that can be found in animal bodies was fair game for that final. Studying for it was overwhelming but I gritted my teeth and plodded forward.

But I now have ten days of no vet school to look forward to.

My plan is to do none of this:

Somehow, all of this made it into my brain in 10 weeks. The notes will be archived for when I have to study for the board exam.

and much more of this:

I can't seem to get enough photos of CircusK9 catching the obligatory 5 minutes of sun we are allowed each day. Descriptions of the rain this winter have surpassed "biblical" and are now approaching "mythical".

or weather permitting, more of this:

It's still winter here in the Pacific Northwest. But sometimes the obligatory 5 minutes of sun occurs in the afternoon so it is warm enough to sit outside.

Azza and HellBeast

This is how my bed normally looks:

This is how it looks after a couple of minutes of the Azza and HellBeast variety show:

They would have stripped the bed down to the fitted sheet in just a couple more minutes!

HellBeast was on a roll today. He found the treat bag that I wear when I walk the dogs. I usually put it in a cabinet as soon as we get back but this morning I got distracted by other things and left it on a shelf by the front door. While I was in the shower, he knocked it to the floor where the dogs got it. I found it in the bedroom, almost certainly taken there by Azza--she likes to take toys and used kleenex and such in there to chew on in private. There wasn't a crumb left in the bag. I suspect Mimi ate most of the treats (just their usual kibble) since she is wise to the ways of the cat and she's queen bee.

Azza and HellBeast

Let me state up front that no cats were harmed in the making of this video. Despite all the drama, Azza and HellBeast know the rules of this game, which they play almost every day. When Azza gets too rough, the cat will simply get up and leave. And all that screaming? I guess it makes it more fun.

Winter Sunshine

This is living in the moment.




I know Harry looks really...diminished. He may be old but he knows where the best napping spots are.

Where's Mimi? She's curled up on top of a puffy pad in a crate by my feet, her favorite place to keep an eye on me when I'm studying.

Musings on Sleeping CircusK9

I'm spending the weekend studying biochem and animal genetics, with a bit of French thrown in. I'm pretty much caught up with animal nutrition at the moment. When I add up the hours I spend in class and the hours I spend studying each day, it comes out to far more than I spent going to work these past few years.

The dogs are not happy about this new arrangement.

Harry has been nursing a soft-tissue injury in his left shoulder for a couple of weeks so our normal walking and play schedule have been even further restricted. But he's been showing signs of improvement the past few days so this morning I decided we needed to make our regular trip to the Bald Mountain recreation area for our trail hike.

I've talked about our walks there before. We cover around 3 miles, a little over half of that on single-track dirt trails. The trails are moderate in difficulty (tree roots, embedded rocks, erosion barriers, sections that are rather steep, etc.) but they are well maintained, marked, and used by a lot of people. The dogs love their weekend trail walk--so many more smells and sounds than the usual neighborhood outing. All three of them come back nice and tired.

Here is a picture I took of them this morning as they settled in for their post-walk nap. Azza methodically gathered all of the loose toys into/around the tiny dog bed then curled up in it. She prefers the little bed, which is quite amusing--she barely fits into it. Once he was comfortable, I covered Harry with a blanket because he's old and deserves a little extra TLC.




A tired dog is a happy dog! A tired dog is a good dog who will let me study uninterrupted for the next three hours.

And here's a pic of HellBeast's new puffy bed. I may not be that fond of him but there's no reason he shouldn't have a warm napping place too.




On the bright side, I at last managed to train HB to stay near my feet at night so he can sleep on the bed with the rest of CircusK9 (Mimi and Harry are NOT at all interested in sharing their bed space with an annoying cat). As you may know, cats triple their mass when they sleep so not only did I have to train him to stay at the foot but I had to train him to stay to one side so I wouldn't have to continually shove him aside to make room for me. I think we've achieved mutually acceptable compromises all around (he sleeps near Azza so she had to be willing to put up with that). He likes to crawl under the topmost blanket so he stays warm, Azza can snug up to him if she chooses, and I can put my cold feet near him when I need to. Certainly worth a nice, puffy cat bed for his perch.

Azza Update

My delicate Saudi flower turns two around the beginning of December. It feels like I've had her for far longer than that!

Her ability to deal with a variety of situations away from home continues to improve. Of note is what happened last Saturday when I took the dogs for our regular weekend walk in a nearby hilly, wooded area. There is a paved path that runs along one side of the recreation area. We follow this path for about a mile to get to our regular trail. It's a multi-use area, and Oregonians are nothing is not users of their recreation areas. We see walkers of all ages, runners singly and in packs, and bikers of all sorts.

So what happened last week? Two people spoke to me, making comments about the dogs, and I replied to them. And Azza did ... nothing. Nothing at all. Why is nothing so momentous? Even two months ago I was not able to reply to people who spoke to me because Azza would be having a meltdown as soon as they opened their mouths and I'd be dealing with her. Now she doesn't bat an eye at all those passers-by, and I can actually have an adult conversation with someone. Miraculous! Well, no, not miraculous, of course. It's constant and regular exposure to all of these random situations and tons of food rewards for good behavior that are helping Azza to deal with them.

People walking dogs represent a whole 'nother universe of issues for both Azza and Mimi so we won't discuss the complete lack of progress in that area.

Azza is no angel. She is going through her terrible twos at the moment! I left a pair of socks by my backpack only to discover them later with Azza in her crate. Fortunately I missed them before she chewed them up (it would have been the second pair she destroyed).

And she's discovered digging. None of my terriers have been diggers, by which I mean dogs that enjoy destroying your plants and yard by digging random craters everywhere. If one of my terriers is digging, it's for the specific purpose of getting to a small animal. But Azza has decided to explore this digging thing a bit more. She has a couple of favorite spots which are now mounded high with dog shit to discourage her. (I have a plentiful supply.) She has an odd habit of covering poop with dirt and leaves, which she pushes over the poop with her nose. (I have to be pretty quick about cleaning poop up in the yard because it is really hard to see once she completes her camouflage actions.) She's now covered both shit mounds with dirt (dirt that she previously loosened during her excavations) but hasn't dug under them yet.

Azza and HellBeast remain captivated by their "strip the bed" game. They can remove every item from a bed--dog blankets, pillows, blankets, sheets--in less than a minute when they get particularly wound up. I suspect they'd pull the fitted sheet off too if they were given sufficient time. I have recalled or removed Azza from the bedroom hundreds of times yet she sneaks back there every chance she gets. Naturally, the cat eggs her on by running back and forth making that enticing "prrt" or "come play with me" noise that cats make--he knows he isn't going to be the one who is yelled at (what's the point?). I have to have a semi-permanent baby gate in place to keep those two from tearing my bed up every day.

My Dog's Cat

I've never really cared for HellBeast. He's got a few too many annoying habits and he's not particularly affectionate, even for a cat. Of the two cats I dragged over here with me from Saudi, Tsingy was by far the superior specimen, and I sent her to live with my mother and her crew.

But I can't bring myself to rehome HellBeast either. The sole reason is that Azza adores this cat. She plays with him daily. Their play is quite rough but they have between themselves sorted out the rules of engagement and I almost never have to get involved. They both display great joy during this play. They exude joy.

In short, I maintain HellBeast, cleaning his litter box every day and feeding him good quality cat food and even providing him with an assortment of cat-oriented toys (Azza generally chews them up before they see much cat action, but still, they are there), but he's really Azza's companion. My dog has a cat of her own.

I don't mind this too much, at least not enough to get rid of the little orange fucker.

Raw Bones

It's a rainy morning so I thought I'd give the dogs a treat: raw, frozen marrow bones (cuts of beef femur).

If you've had your coffee or are paying attention, you'll see FOUR dogs in the video. The little white dog is Skeeter, Anne's JRT bitch. I'm watching Skeeter for a week while she is driving to Utah to pick up a new puppy, a BC (she's gone over to the dark side at last).

Skeeter is a dominant little bitch...and so is Mimi. If they were to ever meet face to face, the particle-anti-particle implosion would annihilate the universe. So one of them is always in a crate. It's not as bad as it sounds. HellBeast quickly taught Skeeter that cats are not to be fucked with, and she gets along great with Azza and Harry. It's fairly simple to switch them out every couple of hours.

But you'll notice that all three bitches are in crates in the video for the bone treat. Yep, that's what you have to do when you have a pack of guardy, aggressive dogs. Even if it wasn't raining, I couldn't put them outside. A raw bone is a resource of tremendous value. A dog with guarding issues never gets the concept of "bird in the hand". Having a crate-trained dog is a tremendously useful thing--I never understand it when people resist using a crate. There was in fact a woman in Azza's class who said her dog, a husky puppy, ate things when left alone (pillows, remotes, etc.). The solution is so simple: use a damned crate or confine the dog to one room. But oh no, she couldn't do that. It would be mean. FFS. It's a story I heard often when teaching the obedience classes in Dhahran. As the saying goes, you get the dog you deserve.

I pulled out the dogs' bedding and replaced it with packing paper (Azza already had paper in her crate). The bones are messy, bits of fat and bloody connective tissue and slobber get spread around, so when the dogs are done I'll simply roll the paper up and toss it. Easy clean up!

Raw bones are good for dogs. (I don't want to get into an argument on diet. Too many anecdotes, too little science. But bones = good no matter where you sit on the diet fence--raw, homemade, high protein, commercial, cheap, expensive.) Most decent grocery stores sell femur cuts for this purpose. You can give the bone directly from the freezer. I usually take the bones away after about 30 minutes, refreeze them, and give them again on another day.

Nesting 2

Anne asked me how I spend my days since I am not working and classes won't start until mid-June.

Embarrassingly I fumbled to give her an answer. I feel like I get things done every day but they are a collection of small activities, mostly related to settling in, that seem to fill each day. I've been spending time in the yard almost every day, weeding, mowing, tidying. I didn't realize how much I missed doing those that.

The weather has been glorious for over a week--blue sky, clear and sunny. It reached 80F two days ago! Anne assures me this is entirely anomalous for this time of year.

The morning sun floods into the front room of my little rental house. It is so bright that I've been tempted to wear sunglasses. Soaking up the sun has become a firm part of our morning routine.

After I walk the dogs, which usually takes 45 minutes to an hour, I make myself a bit of breakfast then sit on my couchlet in the front room reading. The dogs, being part plant, gravitate to the sunny spots and the strategically arranged dog beds and engage in some heavy napping. It takes almost two hours for the sun to move past the windows.




You can just see Harry on the bed below the couchlet. Princess Mimi of course takes the best spot next to me. I brought the dog beds and blankets with me when I flew from KSA, sucked into space bags then crammed into a dish pack box.




Yes, I know, decorating the living room with dog crates won't put us in Architectural Digest but it works for us.

Our First Sunny Afternoon

My delicate Saudi flowers...

Resting

CircusK9 Is Tired

All the disruption today took its toll. I woke up around midnight to discover myself swaddled in animals.

Note the interesting placement. Although Azza has been trained to stay towards the foot of the bed, HellBeast decided to cede the coveted spot near my head to Tsingy. She hasn't slept on the bed in months.

Rare Moment of Calm

Azza, Mimi, Harry, Tsingy, and HellBeast asleep at the same time. In the same room. Rare indeed. I crawled out from under the blanket on the couch to take this photo.

Fun House Ride

Whenever I get a mid-morning phone call from Upul, I always feel a tiny flutter of anxiety because my morbid imagination immediately takes over with visions of various disasters. His calls usually turn out to be more amusing than alarming, though, and this morning was no different.

It rained in Dhahran today (a whopping 2.2 mm but that still counts as rain). Upul rides a scooter so he of course has a rain coat, a bright yellow one. He called me to tell me that when he arrived to walk the dogs and came in the house in his yellow rain coat, Azza lost her shit (my words, not his). She lunged at him, bit at her crate walls and door, barked and growled. I think that response meets the standard of "losing one's shit." Of course Mimi and Harry offered their usual joyous greetings. Upul said that he went back outside and left the coat with his helmet. When he came back inside and spoke to Azza, she was more or less normal. But he said that when he let her out of her crate, "every hair was straight out!"

I've seen her in a state of extreme fear arousal before and she can indeed puff up like a cat. This enormous puff of hair forms over her shoulders, along her back, and across her hips. Even her tail gets fuzzier. She can vaguely resemble a poodle with a formal show cut, little puffs and balls of fur here and there, since the rest of her coat is so short and flat (but much softer than the terriers).

I told him to bring the coat into the house and put it on the stool and let her approach it and sniff it on her own terms. He did this while we were talking and reported that she puffed up again ("every hair is straight out, ma'am!"), approaching his coat only once then backing away growling. I told him to ignore her and let her get used to it, and to walk her only if it wasn't raining too hard. I didn't get a second call so he either walked her successfully or decided not to walk her at all.

Loosely related to these events was the walk that MW and Boodle and the dogs and I took this evening. It's very cloudy today and the normal dusk became rather gloomy with the early sunset. I think MW set us all off when she started and gasped at what at peripheral glance could have been a large cat but turned out to be a piece of wood next to the path. Things went downhill quickly.

There were indeed very real cats around every corner, crouched beside every palm tree, perched on top of every can and bucket. It was like being in a cheap fun house ride where shrieking clowns and moaning skeletons randomly fly at your head while bright lights sear your eyes.

Mimi's first response upon sight of a strange cat is to bite the dog that is closest to her, which is usually Harry. When prevented from doing that, she goes for Azza, who is usually looking for something to bite herself. I've gotten quite good at separately cinching up Mimi's leash and Azza's leash with one hand while leaving Harry's leash untouched and simultaneously herding each bitch to opposite sides of me with my other hand. I can do this in a fraction of a second because I've had a lot of practice at it. To get the full flavor, you also have to add in Azza's 100-decibel barking and Mimi's weird trilling bark, more like a bird than a dog. MW has her own issues with Boodle who does plenty of his own barking and lunging. Harry remains oblivious to all of this as he simply can't see or hear well enough anymore to get involved.

Once the dogs were all nicely on edge, we happened to see a guy walking his dog on the other side of the street. Good grief, the dogs just lost it entirely. That was like the part of the cheesy fun house ride where the little car you are riding in takes a dip then a sharp turn to the right, slamming you into the cold metal side.

CircusK9: the fun house ride that keeps going and going!

Cue Circus Music....

Today in ring one, we have Azza, half desert dog, half beaver! Having decided that reducing dog toys to a pile of slobbery lumps each exactly two square centimeters in size was becoming too pedestrian, too every day, Azza graduated herself to a new level of destruction: chewing a melon-sized hole in a treasured, handmade bed cover that I got in Indonesia almost 20 years ago and a companion hole in the brand new sheets below it. Azza now gets to sit in her crate when I take a shower in the mornings, a crate which no longer contains any bedding since she chews that up too.

In ring two, we have the little fookin’ orange devil known as Kinky! Kinky is fascinated with counters, or to be more specific, with the ease with which he can move things off of them. For his latest accomplishment, this morning he fished two hardboiled eggs out of a bowl on the counter where I had left them to cool, and rapidly moved one of them onto the kitchen floor! The other rolled out of his reach behind the cutting boards, thankfully preserving it for its intended end as my lunch.

In ring three, we have Mimi! Mimi’s trick today was to bring upstairs the last few scraps of eggshell and egg white in order to show me her treasure, which almost certainly fell like manna from heaven directly on top of her head since she knows about the orange devil’s counter surfing techniques. If she hadn’t preserved those last bits to show me, I would have never known what happened to that egg since she hoovered up every scrap of it! At least eggs are digestible and nutritious.

If I wasn’t laughing, well, I’d probably be laughing anyway. The fun and excitement never stops at CircusK9.

The Beasts

The only point of this post is to share some new pictures of the beasts.

126F. I don't know how they stand it.

I took this photo just this morning. Azza gets along very well with the terriers. She is still fascinated by Harry since he doesn't want her to get too close.

Azza could kill Kinky with one snap of her jaws but she doesn't. Notice that his claws aren't even extended. It's very dramatic and showy but not much actual contact is made.

Azza will drag Kinky along by his head. The cat shrieks and yowls and flops around but comes right back for more.

Training Azza (7)

The careful readers amongst you might recall my statement a couple of posts ago that Azza isn’t allowed in the bedroom. I thought I’d expand on that a bit. The actual rule is that Azza and Kinky aren’t allowed in the bedroom at the same time unattended. When those two get together, chaos follows. They can strip my bed of all pillows, bedding, dog blankets, and Tshirts in less than a minute. It took me a few days to catch them in the act to figure out how in the hell they managed this feat.

It goes like this. Kinky burrows under something, a sheet, let’s say, and Azza can’t resist the hunt so grabs the sheet and yanks. Cat comes rolling out only to dive under something else. Their efficiency is frightening.

Like tornadoes, everything in their path is fair game. Kinky likes to dive under the bed but Azza doesn’t fit under there anymore so in frustration one morning Azza chewed a hunk out of the leg of the bed frame!

Kinky regularly trolls horizontal elevated surfaces looking for things to knock on the floor, which really means into Azza’s mouth. Kinky decided my asthma inhaler made a good toy, and Azza did too, that is until she punctured the canister with a tooth and the contents shot into her face. Good thing it was nearly empty or she’d still be high from that shot.

I’m glad that Kinky and Azza get along so well. But it’s almost a full time job going along behind them picking up the mess!