Posts Tagged ‘barking dog’
Cat Love
For the last ten minutes, when I could have been typing with two hands, I have instead been thoroughly preoccupied by a certain cat who plopped down on the corner of my laptop, strategically beneath my right hand. In our house, I appear to be the cat magnet.
Our little tortoiseshell, Pequenita, always comes to the door to greet me when I get home from work. If Delilah happens to be in the house, ‘Nita waits for a turn, but she makes a point to visit. She has this wonderful/terrible habit of reaching up my leg for a stretch, and flexing her cute little front paws so that her sharp claws pass right through anything but my heaviest Carhartt jeans to make startling contact with my delicate flesh.
I know she means well, but the reaction it involuntarily evokes involves spontaneous reflex flinching, some yelling, occasionally cursing, a bit of anger, a dash of sadness and hurt feelings, and perplexity over her lack of sensitivity to my plight. That all leads to my questioning why we have a cat.
Then I remember, we have a cat so we will have something to clean off the coils under the refrigerator whenever we get around to checking it. I assume, as ironic as it would be, the mice around here are thrilled over the vast resource of nest material that piles up in every out-of-sight nook and cranny in our house.
After the ten-minutes of head scratching and full-body massaging that she gets from me when I crawl in bed and she arrives for her session, there is a small blizzard of cat hair sticking to me, my keyboard, the comforter, her back, and floating in the air currents of the heat vents.
What can I do? She loves me.
I’m her pin cushion and her masseuse.
I must admit, it is kinda nice to have one pet in the house who doesn’t go into barking fits over sights and sounds outside these walls. Maybe I should work on getting the cat to try out the stretchy clawing maneuver on the dog every time there is an eruption from Ms. Barksalot.
The old stimulus / response model thing.
Delilah’s smart. She’d probably figure out she shouldn’t go all panicky barking at squirrels after a few sessions from Pequenita, don’t ya think?
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Nothing But
We had nothing but weather around here yesterday. Moments of sunshine, plenty of degrees, and a brief passing rain shower in the afternoon. It was shirt-sleeve time in the morning for cleaning the barn. The warm temps also provided an opportunity to give the waterer a thorough cleaning, which was badly needed.
It was so cold the last time I tried to clean the waterer, the cover was frozen on solid. That time, I did a cursory scrubbing to break loose the green growth that develops on underwater surfaces, but I couldn’t drain it because I couldn’t get that cover off. I tried splashing debris out, but that offered limited results.
Yesterday, while I was cleaning stalls in the barn, Delilah was reacting to the sound of gunshots in the distance and a neighbor’s barking dog, with a cacophony of her own barking in reply. I decided to take a shot at capturing video of her disturbing the peace.
It took a few tries, but eventually, I caught her. She tends to stop when she notices I am up to something that involves a camera. Honestly, I think it makes her feel guilty, and she worries what others will think if her reckless barking was revealed to the world.
If you are brave enough to endure the video below, I will warn you to prepare for some dizzying panning, and a varied level of audio. I haven’t quite mastered the art of using a cell phone to record moving pictures, and I must have been covering the microphone off and on while struggling for a grip that would support the device.
Judy, this is for you. Your request for more video of Wintervale contributed to my decision to give it a go. Thanks for the nudge.
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Relative Something 