4 and 20 Blackbirds Baked In a Pie

If all goes as planned, I shall soon have more kitchen space than I do now, and I must say I am really looking forward to that.  It is very hard to cook with only one small square of counter.  Before I got my cats, I would just use my kitchen table as a prep space, but since the cats were never trained to stay off of the table (blushes!), doing any kind of food prep there became a no-no.  Cats gotta sample!

So I am forced to use my stove and the edge of my sink if I want to spread out a bit.  (Remind me to tell you about the time I turned on the back burner instead of the front and then stood dancing indecisively in front of the burning bag of pretzels before deciding I should throw my glass of water on it.)

Anyway, the other day I was making a spaghetti pie and put my pie dish down on the desk for a second.  When I turned back to get it I was greeted by nothing other than Posy Pie.

Posy thinking, what?  You know I have a sweet fang.

And yes, mom, I did wash the pie plate before using it.

After a Few Days With Dad

Since our schedule is still fluctuating at this point, when Dorothy's father is over, Dorothy is never sure when he will be back, so she feels she has to play with him the ENTIRE time he is here.  Once we all live under the same roof, we are sure that Dorothy will realize that she is allowed a time-out every now and then from all the playing.

Last week her father was over two afternoons and nights in a row, so Dorothy went all out.  Plus the next morning he took her to the dogpark for even more running.

This was quite a gift to me, since that meant all Saturday Dorothy was resting from all the playing, so I could do things that didn't involve a bulldogge.

She slept all the rest of the day and only begrudgingly went out a few times to do her business.  Here she is around 8:00 that evening, still tired, as you can see.

Dorothy humming "It's a Hard Knock Life" as she snoozes:

Plum Is Seven!

On May 23rd, Sir Plum Dumbledore turned seven years old!  We celebrated with many a scritch and a cuddle, and a few extra Pounce treats.

In honor of the occasion, I thought I'd repost one of my favorite pictures of Plum, where he looks the most handsome.  While searching for the handsome picture, I thought of how when my grandmother met the man who was to become my uncle, she reminded my aunt:  "handsome is as handsome does."  Plum is not always handsome in his actions, so to speak, especially where his sister Posy is concerned.  But we look at his beautiful face and we forgive him.  How could we not?

Plum thinking, yes, you may bow down before me now:

Smooch!

The other day when I was home at lunch walking Dorothy, she was happily distracted from her walking duties by a meter man.  As is her wont when she meets an admiring man on the street, Dorothy stood up on her hind legs and covered the man's face with kisses.  She's a flirt, my Dorothy.

The meter man said that he has met a lot of dogs in his time on the job, but that out of all the dogs he has met, Dorothy is the best kisser.  Dorothy seemed to nod her assent.

I decided that I would text Sean with the meter man's praise, but before doing so I warned him that the words I was going to say were not necessarily what a father wanted to hear about his daughter.

And Sean's reply?  He said he was going to send Dorothy off to military school!  Oh no, Dorothy!  Contain your libido!

Dorothy thinking, can I help it if the menfolk love me?

Pawlicker not Potsticker

After our vet visit of two weeks ago, things seem to be improving for Dorothy.  Her UTI is gone for now, and her panty-area staph infection is the most faded it has ever been.

In general, too, she seems to have less hotspots, although she is still licking her paws more often than I’d like.  The area between her toes is all slightly red and raw looking, and I don’t know if it is because of that that she licks them, or if it’s because of the licking that they look like that.  It’s a chicken/egg quandary!  

I have threatened her with the cone of shame and in general I tend to yell at her when she starts pawlicking.  I realized this weekend, however, that she was spending a lot of time in the bedroom by herself, and when I went to peek to see what she was doing, she was licking her paws!  And when she saw me, she immediately stopped and pretended she was just resting her tongue I mean chin on those paws. 

Sneaky Dorothy!

Dorothy thinking, why should I not do what I want with my own paws?

Material Girl

Dorothy is a dog who is very fond of her toys.  It is true that she likes nothing more than the humble stick found out of doors, but she is also fond of stuffed toys, tennis balls, and anything rubber.  (In fact, it can be said she is often a little too fond of some of her rubber toys, if you catch my drift.)  

I bought her a red rubber nylabone yesterday and she was very pleased with it.  She ran around the apartment with it for awhile, and then she tried to impress both cats by going up to them with the bone in her mouth and showing it off.  Sadly, neither cat was very impressed by Dorothy’s new acquisition, and one even batted her on the head for getting too close to him with it.  But she didn’t let feline negativity affect her high spirits!  Here she is very happily chewing on her new rubber nylabone:

My Angel In The Centerfold

In case you are wondering, it is very hard work being Dorothy!

Five times a day her mother makes her walk around at least one block!  Often multiple blocks!  After that it is all a bulldogge can do to manage to lie on the sofa and watch tv upside down:

You Found Me?!

Plum is always so surprised when the paparazzi finds his hiding spot and disturbs his slumber:

Dorothy Loves Attention

Dorothy got to do one of her favorite things last week—she visited the vet!  I’m always struck by how different Dorothy’s reaction to the vet is compared with my pug Tulip’s.  Tulip was always polite to a vet and a vet tech, but she did not want to be there, and as such, she was not really going to fraternize with the enemy.  The minute we walked into a vet’s office, she would sit facing the door, and when I’d call her name she would just shrug one shoulder a bit, like she was brushing away an annoying insect.  If you didn’t hold Tulip down on the vet’s examination table, she would hurl herself through the air and land on the nearest non-vet person, clinging to their trunk like a koala.

Dorothy, on the other hand, is so happy to be at the vet’s that she cries in the waiting room because she doesn’t want to wait her turn!  She wants to immediately go back to the exam room and up on that table, and once there, she wants to kiss the vet and the vet tech non-stop.  And kiss them she does.  The vet asked:  is she always this happy?

We were there for a multitude of reasons, mainly that she had a UTI once again, which we think is caused by a staph infection in her panty region that has been there for a year and that we’ve never gotten rid of completely.  The vet thinks the infection is causing the repeated UTI’s so we are now on a mission to get rid of the staph once and for all.  She is on antibiotics, we are to bathe her a couple times a week, and put on various unguents on the days she doesn’t have a bath.

She didn’t like having her blood drawn, and she also didn’t care for the manicure and pedicure the vet tried to give her—she let him know that was a no-go by pinching him a bit with her teeth.  J

And of course, when the appointment was over, she did not want to leave.  I told her Tulip was rolling in her metaphorical grave at such behavior.  

Dorothy thinking, You know, I just really thrive on all the attention!

Suspicious Baked Bulldogge

Although Dorothy has lived with me in my apartment for over a year now, a few nights ago for the first time she noticed her reflection in my oven door.  It stopped her dead in her tracks:  What’s this? You could see her thinking.  A beautiful, yet suspicious, bulldogge in the house and she hadn’t even seen it come in the door?  And then as the wheels continued to turn, she wondered if it might be competition for the attention of her Dad, and did she mention she wasn’t sure where it had come from?! 

So she growled,  And she crouched down a bit.  And she started moving ever so slowly toward the Oven Bulldogge.  And just as she was about to gather all her courage and go face to face with it to give it a sniff, her prankster father reached out and grabbed her butt.  Up jumped Dorothy, a good six feet or so in the air, in total panic.  And when she landed, she scampered far away from the oven dogge.  And here is where I must admit that I laughed a bit.  Dorothy is not a timid or a skittish dog, so this wasn’t behavior I had witnessed before. 

For the rest of the night Dorothy made a wide arc around the oven, never getting too close to it.  But the next day she seemed to have forgotten about her toasty warm alter-ego: from nowhere it appeared and to nowhere it had returned.

Dorothy thinking, it was all just way too creepy!

If You Place It, They Will Come

Like most cats, my cats follow the rule that a bed is any usual object that is placed in an unusual spot.  For example, if I place a magazine on the floor, sooner rather than later, a cat will be sitting on it.  If I fold an article of clothing, yet place it on top of a dresser rather than in it—voila!  Cat bed!  Of course in my household the “bed” is even more desirable if it is placed in a spot where Dorothy can not reach.

So you can imagine Posy’s euphoria the other day when Sean placed a folded blanket on top of the dog crate making ye olde perfecte catte perche: 

The minute the blanket is placed there now, Posy materializes on it.  It’s comfy, she’s light enough to not sink through to the wire top, and best of all, she is out of reach of both brother and sister.  It just doesn't get much better than that.

Hitting a Speedbump In My Morning Routine

Measuring Danger

Living in the city as I do, I am not unaware of certain “dangers” as I go throughout my day.  I’m always alert about passers-by when I walk Dorothy at night, for example; I have my key ready for a quick entrance into my apartment building; much though it pains me to do so, I don’t insist on “pedestrians having the right of way” [which THEY DO!!] when bullying vehicles turn left or right; etc.

And living in the city as she does, Miss Dorothy is also not unaware of certain dangers:  she doesn’t like a truck to make a hissing noise as it pulls up to park; she is wary of people who sneeze when they pass her; she is suspicious when people pause outside of our front door; she understands the potential danger of a hippo snorting in a documentary on the TV; etc.  And then there is her arch nemesis….the Tape Measure.

Dorothy hates this tape measure in particular, and any retracting tape measure in general.  Has a certain parent augmented this hate by teasing her with the tape measure?  Yes, yes he has.  And has a certain other parent been innocently knitting and then, upon needing to measure her progress, used the tape measure and all of a sudden been beset upon by an angry bulldogge ball of fury who materialized into her lap out of nowhere to attack said measuring device?  Yes, yes she has.  Just saying.

I now know to open the tape measure as quietly and as calmly as possible.  If Dorothy is sleeping, she will still open her eyes when I do this and won’t relax again until I put the instrument of evil down, but at least I can thwart her from having to wrest it out of my hand.

The other day, however, the couple who is going to be moving into my apartment when I move out of it stopped by with my landlord to measure my apartment.  Do you see where this is going?  My landlord was telling me a story, when out of the corner of my eye I saw the couple take a tape measure out of a pocket and start measuring my living room.  Oh dear.  Of course, Dorothy went berserk and I had to try to explain that my bulldogge did not like tape measurers.

She then proceeded to follow them into all the rooms so that she could keep trying to get between them and the evil retracting device—as any good hostess should.  It was all rather fraught!

Dorothy thinking, really what is wrong with using a simple yardstick?