I received an email the other day from a close friend. She got a dog. The boys love him. She loves him. He is housebroken and can sit and shake on command. She sent me a picture and he’s huge. I immediately wanted to email her to say how happy I am that she is safe now. She’s a single mother and the thought of that huge dog in her house just made me feel like she is so much safer.

I didn’t write back immediately because I was busy at work and I’m so glad it intervened. After thinking, I realized that it might not be such a good idea to suggest that she was unsafe before. It’s actually a little disrespectful. She’s an adult. She’s tough enough to handle anything that could come her way and how dare I say that she couldn’t make it without a dog. I’m glad that I didn’t get the chance to dash off a response.

Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word ‘safe’ that I wasn’t previously aware of. Douglas Adams (1952 – 2001), Arthur Dent in “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”

The truth of the matter, though, is that I feel safer with a dog in the house. My dog’s name is Sid. He’s not huge, but he’s a mean sucker when a stranger is in the house. I didn’t realize how much safety I feel comes from having him in the home. I was alone in the house for about fifteen minutes last week. Mike had taken Sid with him to the corner convenience store and it was just me and the cats in the house.

Before they left, the screen door was all that stopped the world from crashing in on us, but it was ok because Sid and Mike were there. After they left, I locked that door up tight. I had been dancing and singing to my older Halloween mix CDs, but all that changed when they left.

Looking at it logically, I am insane. This should be written down in the Book of Life against me. She is insane because she thinks that a 50-pound dog can save her from anything. The truth is, I am never safe. None of us are. The only thing that keeps me safe is that the Victim-to-Psychopath ratio is skewed. If someone really wanted to harm me, there is nothing out there that could stop them. It is only an illusion of safety that keeps any of us from hiding in the mountains with shotguns.

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else. James Thurber (1894 – 1961), New Yorker, Feb. 4, 1939, “The Fairly Intelligent Fly”

Yet, there is something so secure about a dog. We rescued him from a shelter and took him into our house. In return, he is nice to the cats, barks at other dogs, and protects me from the bad guys (whether they be the movers or the mailman). He is an entirely different species, yet he is willing to stand beside me against the evil. That’s what we’re all looking for: someone to stand with us against the evil.

I’ve spoken before about the ethereal and haunting sounds of my dog when he has a nightmare, but last night topped it all. I was dead asleep. Both of the cats were sleeping on the bed with me and Sid was sleeping in the bedroom. He insists on sleeping by the doorway, no matter how much we entice him to sleep in the bed that we got for him.

He started making those creepy whining noises that signal that he’s dreaming. That’s what woke me up. Because I have finally become accustomed to their eerie and sinister sounds, I was on my way back to sleep when it happened. He barked.

It wasn’t a normal bark that says he’s happy to see our new visitors. It wasn’t the communicative bark that he shares with the many dogs in the neighborhood. It was the terrified bark that came from him when Cory walked into the house in full motorcycle regalia. It was the uneasy and frightened bark that he yelps when we encounter unfriendly dogs in the neighborhood. It’s the bark that wakes you up in the middle of the night wondering who is trying to break into the house.

Maggie jumped so high that she landed on me in terror. Both she and Linda jumped off the bed and hid in the closet. Because I had heard him whimpering in his sleep before the bark, I knew that he had been dreaming, but he didn’t understand. The bark woke him up and he was disoriented and scared. He rushed out of the room, supposedly to check the house for whatever scared him in his dreams. I went back to sleep, nursing claw marks on the back of my legs.

Now, I’m worried. Why does my dog have so many nightmares? We treat him well. Scary men with motorcycle helmets turn out to be fun loving playmates for him in the end. We feed him. He is never disciplined physically. The worst that happens to him are the times when we lock him in the bedroom when workmen are in the house. Why is he haunted in his dreams?

He’s such a good dog that he should only be having dreams of successfully chasing the neighbor’s cat out of our yard and finally catching one of those birds that tease him from the cherry tree. He should dream of playing tug-of-war with Mike until the both of them are so tired that they just sleep together on the thick green grass. There should be no whimpering and there definitely should be no terrified barking in his dreams. I wish he could talk so I could know what his doggie nightmares are about.

I was up at 5am. It’s a little later than I usually wake up, but I wasn’t worried about being late. I would just cut my Internet reading a bit and I would get to work just fine. At about 5:30 am, Sid went nuts barking at the door. I looked out and I immediately noticed that Mike’s bike was gone. I didn’t see anyone on the porch or along the road, but it was really dark out there and I hadn’t turned off the light inside to help look out there. I woke up Mike, hoping that maybe he had moved his bike into the backyard and I didn’t notice. He hadn’t.

The thief didn’t cut off the lock. The lock was nowhere to be seen, so he must have cracked the combination. I used to be a master at cracking combination locks, but this one seemed secure to me when I bought it in the store. It was a combination I could remember and it was compact. I thought it was the perfect lock. I guess the thief thought it was the perfect lock for him, too.

While we checked the street, Mike noticed a bike left on our lawn. For a moment, I was excited, thinking that Sid had scared away the thief and he had left Mike’s bike on the lawn. Unfortunately, it was a different bike. Instead of Mike’s immaculate Gary Fisher, a beat up Giant Boulder SE with shocks was lying on our grass. It was scratched and the name Bor Yueh was engraved on the rack on the back.

I felt sorry for Bor Yueh. His bike was stolen long ago and now it had been discarded in our front yard in exchange for our bike. I looked the name up in the phone book. There was no one in Salt Lake City with the last name Yueh. Then I Googled the name. Apparently Bor Yueh is not the victim of a crime. It’s a huge company that makes racks for mountain bikes. I felt foolish for not recognizing the name.

So, we have a bike in our possession that is not ours. Not only was our bike stolen, we no longer feel safe in our home. The kind of desperate person who would crack a lock and steal something was on our porch last night. Sid would have eaten the guy alive if I had let him out, but that doesn’t really make me feel safer. It just makes me worry about Sid eating people alive.

Ironically, the bike that the thief left was a little better overall compared to the one that was stolen. It looks like it’s beat to hell, but it has shocks. The chain is dirty, but the crank shaft is in good repair. The bike is even a better fit for Mike’s height. It was worth about the same as the Gary Fisher when it was new. Mike doesn’t want to keep it, though. I suspect that every time he looks at it, it will remind him of the peace of mind that we lost yesterday morning.

Back in October, Dooce posted this picture with the phrase, “Can you do this with your cat?” It took me over a month, but the answer is, “Why, yes… Yes, I can.”

What I didn’t get a picture of was Sid, the dog, hovering over Linda because there was a doggie treat on her head. He’s so scared of her that he didn’t dare reach over to get it, even when we told him it was okay. In the firey ending, Linda hissed at him and ran away, leaving the treat in her wake. Sid gladly ate the discarded treat and Linda glared at me from the other side of the room.

It was totally worth it…

I took these pictures before I remembered that I had bought those funny doggie treats that look like the ones in Dooce’s picture. We had a great photo shoot before I opened the treat cupboard and attracted Sid’s attention by placing treats on Linda’s head.

All animals love Kathleen. She has known Linda since she was a kitten, so when Kathleen visited last week, Linda graced her with her presence. She went so far as to climb in Kathleen’s lap. A couple hours later, Kathleen asked, “Is Linda always that greasy?” I cringed and answered, “Yeah… I guess I should wash her, but you know how it is to wash a cat…” Kathleen nodded and I felt the shame of being a neglectful pet owner.

The next day, we clipped her claws and locked her in the bathroom. It took both of us, but we were able to wet her down, soap her up and rinse her off without either of us getting injured. When we opened the bathroom door, Sid, the dog, was jealously waiting for his bath.

Yesterday, Strebe was visiting. “Man, that cat needs a bath.” Mike and I just rolled our eyes. I guess she always looks greasy.

This picture would be perfect except Linda has a piece of kitty litter stuck to her nose.

Maggie, my cat, is sitting on my lap, purring loudly. Since I’ve started working from home, she has made it a habit to sit on my lap the entire time I write. Sometimes I feel like she’s glad that I’m home because she gets extra attention, but most times, I just feel like a warm pillow.

Sid, the dog, has taken to following me around the house in the hopes that I’ll drop some food. He’s rewarded about fifty percent of the time. It’s not like I’m feeding him treats. I’m just clumsy and sometimes food falls on the floor. Anything down there is fair game to him. He loves carrots. He thinks that grape tomatoes are toys. He’s quick to take anything. He’ll take it to the food dish and start eating it there. If it’s good, it’s gone. If he doesn’t like it, I’ll find it on the floor with a couple of teeth marks in it.

No wonder we have mice. Linda, my other cat, and I saw one a couple of weeks ago. It was only an inch long (not including the tail) and it scurried between the floor boards and the wall, just like in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Linda jumped off the couch and paid vigil at the point where the mouse disappeared for almost an hour. She was very quiet and sat still, just waiting, but the little guy was in the basement and long gone.

Maggie found a mouse under my desk. Mike and I were snuggling on the couch with Maggie when she jumped off us quickly scuttling under the desk. We saw her pounce on it and play with it for a bit, but it must have gotten away. This house is over a hundred years old. There are holes and pathways for small animals all over. With the settling on the northeast side of the house, the cracks are getting even larger.

I usually clip the cats’ claws, but since I realized that we have a mouse problem, I’ve left their talons unshorn. I don’t want to have to call an exterminator. I don’t want to have to get a live trap or some poison. I don’t even want Maggie or Linda to actually catch a mouse. All I want is for them to scare them away so I don’t have to deal with them. I’m even at peace with cohabitating with the mice. Maybe they’ll eat the grape tomatoes I accidentally drop. Sid sure won’t.

The humidity is low. We run the humidifier 24 hours a day, refilling it when it goes quiet, but it cannot keep up. The tropical plants that shouldn’t survive a Utah dehydrated winter are wilting. Somehow, Mike will keep them just healthy enough to last until the swamp cooler turns on again.

At night, when I pet Maggie, I can see electric sparks fly. Every time I touch her ears, a tiny flash of static electric light flares. She doesn’t cringe at the shock. She purrs loudly instead. She climbs on my belly and gives me a kitty massage. The moments before I fall asleep are illuminated only by static electricity.

Every morning, Maggie spends some time in the window sill. Sometimes I wonder if she is getting her “light therapy.”

Maggie is on my lap. She is purring loudly and my arms are wrapped around her to reach the keyboard. Somehow, this has become a normal routine. She purrs on my lap and I type despite her. It’s symbiotic in a way because her purring calms me down and my lap is a warm pillow. Anyone who could see me here typing would think that it’s an uncomfortable situation, but we both seem to enjoy it.

I remember my mom’s cat, Patches, used to sit by her typewriter when my mom was heavy into studying for school. I always thought that Patches was attention-starved, but now, I don’t think that was true. She just wanted to be where my mom was just like Maggie is with me. I’ve never had a cat like this before and it makes me happy to enjoy her company.

Photo Note: It took 50 snaps to make this one good picture. I didn’t know how hard it is to take a picture of myself until today.

She wants to sit on my lap and be pet. I roll the chair into the sunlight and take her picture instead.

I was running on the treadmill last week and glanced over the room. “I really should pick up that clutter and either throw it away or put it in the basement,” I thought to myself. That’s where the cats like to sleep and when they are being adorable, I would really like to take a picture of them without clutter in the background.

A couple of days ago, it got so bad that Linda slept ON the clutter. All the cats want their light therapy and if the sunbeam is on the clutter, they will just sleep on the clutter. That’ll teach me to clean up after myself…

The dog smelled like Cheetos the other morning. I thought I was imagining it until I saw Linda, the cat, walk up to his sleeping form and smell him. He opened his eyes, but stayed still while she sniffed him. If I find out that Mike is feeding the dog Cheetos, I’m gonna…

Ok, I don’t care if Mike feeds the dog Cheetos, but I know for a fact that we don’t have any in the house.

Maybe Stinky Ghost is back with a new habit: eating junk food in the bedroom.

I was sitting on my chair in the bedroom when I noticed that Maggie was cleaning Linda. Usually these sessions end up with a cat fight, so I ran to get my camera. Three minutes later, Maggie casually jumped down from the bed and it was all over: no cat fight, just a quiet moment in my life captured on film.

It’s no wonder that Maggie pukes up huge white hairballs on a regular basis…

He always comes when I call him unless he knows he’s in trouble.

It was cold in the house the other night. Maggie had rolled herself into a perfectly round ball. I was able to get a quick picture of her.

The interesting moments of our lives are so fleeting that it’s difficult to record them with anything but our memories.

I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that I will never be able to get a picture or a video of Maggie sitting on my chest. She comes to me when she wants to, not when I have the camera ready. It’s usually at night when the light is impossibly low. She is so close to my face that I can’t get a good shot. It’s impossible for me to get a good picture or video of her when she is sitting on my chest, purring.

I’ll just have to remember it.

I see Maggie in this window almost every morning. I think I’ve taken a picture of her before, but today I realized that she is over ten years old and there might come a morning when I’ll never see her in the window ever again.

So many people equate pets with children. If so, they are chidren that never grow up and almost always die before you do. If this is parenthood, then I want to know where the kid kennel is.

I’m surprised I haven’t talked about this online because it has been such a stress in my life. Right after Christmas, Mike and I realized that neither of us had seen Linda, our orange tabby cat all day. We tried the usual method of luring her out by opening the cheese drawer in the refrigerator and pulling out the cheese. Even opening up the package, calling her name and saying the word, “cheese” didn’t bring her out of hiding. We searched her favorite hiding places and found her under the bed sleeping. We pulled her out and she was lethargic and unwilling to eat, so we took her to the vet the next day.

A blood test showed that she is in the early stages of kidney failure.

She’s nearly fourteen years old, so this wasn’t a surprise to us. We almost lost Linda about ten years ago when she contracted Feline Infectious Anemia. She was lucky to survive it and we had both dealt with the idea of losing her back then. Every year we’ve had her since has felt like a gift and a surprise, so hearing that she might not be with us much longer hasn’t really hit us yet. She survived a nearly fatal disease so long ago. I almost believe she’ll be able to kick this kidney thing too.

She is much better now. We have been feeding her K/D food. She hasn’t gotten dehydrated since then, but if she does, the vet taught me how to give her fluids subcutaneously so that she won’t get weak. Sure, we have to change the kitty litter box more often than most people do, but that’s alright. It’s worth it to keep her around for a couple more years.

The only disconcerting thing is that she is obviously looking for a place to die. Every time a cupboard is opened, she is investigating it. Every time we have opened the door to the small shelf basement, she has tried to get down there. She is looking for a hiding place that is better than her “under the bed” option, which obviously didn’t work last time.

She was always a hider in times of stress. When we moved to the condo in Barrington Park, she somehow opened a drawer, crawled out of the drawer and into the back area of the cabinet. She hid there for hours while we frantically searched. We were only able to find her when she realized that she didn’t know how to get out and started meowing.

Funny thing is, I’m a hider too. I prefer small, enclosed areas to work and relax. Small cubicles never bothered me. I used to do my school work in my closet at my parent’s home in West Valley. I put my desk in there with a light and I would close the closet door. It was the privacy I needed to study in a room I shared with my sister.

Now that I’m an adult, you would think that I wouldn’t feel the need for a hiding spot, but sometimes things get out of hand. Since Linda has been sick, she’s not the only one looking for a hiding place…

Sometimes a photo turns out so perfectly that I hardly have to pull it into Photoshop at all. This one just needed the levels adjusted. She was sleeping so soundly that her tongue was sticking out, but not so soundly that the activity of the picture-taking didn’t wake her. This was the only shot I got before she was up and rubbing on my legs…

We are at the vet. They squeezed us in at 3:45 pm and now we’re waiting in the exam room. A dog is whining in the other room. Linda is happy to stay in her box. Bad mojo, man, bad mojo…

On a side note, I’m continually amazed at how good a photo I can get with the dime-sized lens on my Treo.

It’s so rare when I can click a picture of her actually sleeping. She was out for the count, though and I got two photos before she woke up and shook her head.

Maggie has been so lonely since Linda got sick. She and Linda would play together almost every day, but now, Maggie is left to her own devices. I’m kind of worried about what will happen when Linda finally goes…

Ever since the desk drama, I’ve been trying to find a place for this storage unit. I put it in a disputed spot. I thought it was okay there. Mike didn’t want it there.

Last night, Linda made the decision for us. It stays.

We had to have Linda put to sleep today. I feel like crap. This year has been hell.

Here are some pictures of Linda when she looked better:

• Pick Me! » Why, yes… Yes, I can.

• Pick Me! » Linda Posing in the Sunbeam

• Pick Me! » A Bath For Linda

• Pick Me! » Kitty Litter

• Pick Me! » Sleeping on the Clutter

• Pick Me! » Maggie Cleaning Linda

• Pick Me! » I’m a Hider

• Pick Me! » Taking Linda to the Vet

• Pick Me! » Linda’s New Hiding Place

It was so strange to wake up this morning without Linda there to boss me around:

Wake up.

Let the dog out.

Wake up Mike.

Feed the dog.

Give me my medicine.

I’ve never known a cat who could communicate the phrase:

It’s time to feed the dog, but he’s not here. Maybe you left him outside?

Unfortunately, she could never understand that we had taken Sid to the kennel.

What am I going to do without my autistic cat?

My photo of Linda with the kitty litter on her nose showed up on this website:

• lolsecretz.com: had 2 menny cheezburgers

This is what they did to her:

After having to have her put to sleep back in September, I’m still a little touchy about it. I left his comment on the site:

Actually, Linda died of kidney failure.

Funny thing is, the person who made this didn’t notice that Linda had a piece of kitty litter stuck to her nose.

There was so much more potential for funny and it was just lost on this one…

Since they didn’t ask permission to use my picture AND they made a joke about her being sick, I’m trying really hard not to be bugged by this.

I’m reluctant to see what kind of LOL they’ll give her with this photo…

I’ve received a lot of joy from LOLCats. I realize LOLSecretz is a different website than LOLCats, but they used the LOLCatBuilder to put it there. I never uploaded Linda’s picture to their website and it is freakin’ impossible to find it in their collection. Do I call our lawyer to have them remove it?

My daily dose of funny cats has kept me happy despite this hell of a year.

I’m trying really hard not to be bugged by this…

Every time I pull out the camera and ask Sid to sit, he sits… for about 10 seconds. Then he immediately starts doing all of his other tricks. He’ll lift his paw to shake, he’ll take a bow, he’ll start sneezing and yawning.

Honestly, he was just yawning in this photo, but doesn’t he look like something you would meet on the way to hell? Sid Vicious: Demon Dog.

Here’s a better photo:

Did you know that it’s virtually impossible to correct red-eye on this dog? Not even iPhoto could do it. I had to do it myself and it looks horrible. Oh well, I never said I was a Photoshop expert…

Before Linda died, I saw something like this every day. Now that Linda is gone, Maggie is so lonely. Even when she sits on my lap all day, she meows.

I can’t be another cat. I can’t bear to get another cat. This video makes me happy and sad all at the same time.

Download this video for your iPod

On another note, this video was filmed over a year ago. I never posted it because Mike is sleeping on the bed behind the cats. The reason you don’t get to see more of the cats playing is because they woke him up and he kicked them off the bed.

I haven’t been awoken by a cat fight on my bed for months.

Mike’s aunt and cousin, Gini and Emily Moncur, gave us t-shirts for Sid and Zadie. Since Sid’s full name is Sid Vicious, the Punk t-shirt was perfect!

I’m so surprised that we were able to get them to sit still long enough to photograph them together.

If you want a t-shirt like this for your little punk, head over to Molly McB & Co.

I miss Sid. We had to take him to the kennel because of all the
company.

Sid and I went outside to test the camera on my new 3G iPhone. I heard that it was inexplicably better than the old one, but I can’t really tell the difference. On a beautiful sunny day like today, the cameras on both phones work fine. I guess I should be testing this indoors.

In the end, the true killer features of the new iPhone is the 16GB of storage and the GPS. It’s nice to see that I have plenty of room on my iPhone now. I was pushing the limit with my 8GB.

When I took this picture, Maggie kept moving her head away. She refused to look me in the face no matter how much I coaxed her and clicked my tongue. I can’t bribe her with food, she has no weaknesses except for the constant desire to be petted and held. She was on my lap and happy and there was nothing I could bribe her with.

Just a friendly “pet” to keep you company on your trip to Hell!

Here is a link to the original:

• Pick Me! » Sid Vicious: Demon Dog

If you notice, dogs in Hell don’t wear bandannas and they CERTAINLY don’t have rabies tags. I had to edit those out for this photo, which was far easier to do than to try to edit out those glowing green eyes.

Back in September, we adopted Elvis. I find it strange that I haven’t talked about him here yet, but two months of my life kind of flew by while we enjoyed our new kitten.

It all started when Stacey and Dan got a puppy. Mini was the tiniest Chihuahua puppy you’ve ever seen and she fit in Mike’s hand. Seeing her made me want a kitten. It had been almost a year since Linda had died. Maggie was lonely and clung to me like a needy baby and I thought having a kitten would be nice for her AND us.

I talked to Mike about looking at kittens, but Mike said, “Cats tend to show up in our lives. Let’s not look for a kitten. Let’s just wait for the next one to show up.”

Within two weeks, I got a phone call from my mom. “There is a 70 year old lady in Reed’s apartment building that is going to abandon a kitten outside. Do you want to adopt him?” Apparently the woman had adopted the kitten, given him ONE day to get used to her current cat and couldn’t stand the fighting anymore. She was just going to let him free outside, near a BUSY road.

Within the hour, we had the kitten at our vets office. He was free of parasites and nasty diseases, so we took him home.

It took Maggie two days to stop hiding under the bed.

It took us two weeks to name him. Mike just gave up and let me name him Elvis. The “official” story is that he’s named after Elvis Costello, but really, I named him after Elvis in Animal Crossing. Everybody just thinks we named him after Elvis Presley.

After two months, he and Maggie play and fight and I’ve even caught her cleaning his ears like she used to do with Linda before she died.

Here’s a video of them playing with their new cat toy. Mike had sprinkled some catnip on it. They both wanted it, but Maggie unilaterally informs Elvis that he needs to wait his turn.

Adding Elvis to our household has been a joy. I’m so glad he showed up in our lives.

Every night when I go to bed, Maggie will climb on my shoulder and lie there, purring. It’s the BEST way to go to sleep and I have become so accustomed to it that I really miss her when we go out of town. Sometimes, it’s really difficult to go to sleep without her there.

The other night, I recorded her purring with Mike’s Edirol. I pulled it into GarageBand and made an mp3 that works pretty well. It’s only 2:43 minutes, but I put it in a playlist and have the playlist repeat.

Here is the MP3 if you would like to fall asleep to the sound of my precious Maggie purring. It’s a quiet file, so make sure you turn up the volume so you can hear it.

Download MP3 here: Maggie Purring Right click and choose Save As…

I have gotten so much solace from this cat. When we lost Linda last year, both Maggie and I were so heartbroken that we bonded together. She was with me all the time. Since we’ve gotten Elvis, however, she spends a lot of time playing, growling at and sleeping with him, so she needs me less. I’m happy that she’s more content, but I feel like I’ve lost her a little.

Before Elvis came to our house, Maggie used to like to sleep under my afghan. She doesn’t do it anymore and this is why:

If you listen closely, you can hear Maggie growling from underneath the blanket. She wasn’t very amused by this game.

I don’t know why Mike spends money on kitten toys. Elvis just loses them under the couch and he’s perfectly happy playing with a box.

I swear, that kitten needs to go to boxhab.