Losing Harley

I'm finally starting to get to the point where I feel less like "I Killed My Dog", and more like" I Did The Right Thing". It's been a hard road, and it's been aided in large part by Flinders, the Golden Retriever next door. Flinders' family has been in Australia since 4 days after we let Harley go, and we are dog sitting for him. It is so very different. I don't have to live in terror that the maid and the yard guy will show up at the same time. I take Flinders for a walk and don't have to worry about seeing another dog, or a kid on a bike. Sometimes I think to myself, "oh! This is what it's supposed to be like with a dog." *light bulb goes on over head* Of course, then I feel guilty and disloyal to Harley. But...... I'm coming to realize that I shouldn't feel so guilty. We truly did explore every avenue open to us. We tried diet, medication, training and re-training, counseling...... if its out there, we tried it. While I still miss Harley and her funny, ear-flapping ways terribly, I'm at peace with what had to happen. She wasn't a happy dog, and in turn nobody else was happy either. But .... did I mention that I miss her?

It's THAT Time of Year Again!

Now stop that! I will not have any eye rolling going on out there. Any of you who know me KNOW that mid August begins the Christmas season around here. No, the decorations aren't up, but the shopping has begun, I'm stressing over the Christmas card pictures and I'm beginning to draft The Christmas Letter. Some years we have done such neat things, gone places, seen people, had adventures, that The Christmas Letter just flies off the keys. This is NOT one of those years. I'm going over the year in my head and what comes to mind is that basically we didn't do squat this year. Yes, we went to Maine and had a blast, but that about sums up the excitement for the year. I suppose I could ramble on at length about the water shortage in North Carolina. Hmmm...

The Christmas Cards are yet another adventure in stress. I am a member of an online cat group, and an online dog group. Both groups have a card exchange for those who are interested, and it's really one of my favorite things about the holidays. The cat people for the most part send a generic card with a cat on it. The dog people are far more creative, and those cards almost always feature pictures of the list members canine family members. Herein lies the problem. While the cats are MORE than willing to pose cutely for pictures, Ms. Harley the dog is NOT particularly pleased about having a camera lens perched at the end of her snout. Ms. Harley is not an active dog. Ms. Harley does not caper cutely for pictures. Ms. Harley pretty much just sleeps on the sofa. I just took a picture of her doing that. She looks like road kill. ::sigh::

Ahh it's mid September. It's still 95 degrees and humid outside, but how can the mind NOT turn to Christmas? Let the madness begin!

The Cat, The Suzy Slut Bra, and the US Postal Service

I used to show cats. Showing a cat is, in essence, a beauty contest, and so cats need a bath and a blow dry in preparation for this. Some cats take to this better than others. Some cats are not amused. Lumpy, the cat I was showing at the time this all happened, fell into the We Are NOT Amused camp. Actually, Lumpy is rarely amused. The expression you see in his picture here is his habitual one. He was not a great success as a show cat. But I digress.....

Another piece of back story is our mail carrier Reggie. Reggie has been delivering our mail for 18 years and is a neighborhood fixture. He will often ring the doorbell just to say hi, to deliver a package, use our bathroom etc. Reggie knows everything that is going on with the people on his route. He is a font of information.

That morning I had been getting dressed when I discovered a lovely, lacy, sexy, slutty bra. Now I usually tend toward sensible cotton, $10 bras from Target, so this was a definite departure for me. I was talking to a friend that morning and told her about the marvelous new-found Suzy Slut Bra (hereafter to be known as SSB). I told her how lovely it looked. I was terribly pleased with my find. Along with The SSB I had on a pair of ratty undies, a pair of equally ratty sweat pants and an old t-shirt. I was, after all, going to be giving a reluctant cat a bath.

Our kitchen and dining room are one long room with big windows that look out to the front yard and front porch. It was a lovely spring day and I had all the windows open to let in the cool air. I got Lumpy into the sink and he managed to flail enough that my t-shirt was soaked. Since I was alone in the house, in the privacy of my kitchen, I just took it off. All the better to admire the SSB don't you know. I hauled Lumpy out of the sink and toweled him off, then set him down between my knees, his head pointing out and his tail towards me, me squatting over him to blow him dry. This was NOT Lumpy's favorite activity. He reared up and peed all over me. Intact, male cat urine, which if you have ever gotten a sniff of you KNOW you do not want soaking your sweat pants. YUCK. But no matter, since I am in the privacy of my own house, I just took them off. I did take note of the disparity between the lovely lacy SSB and my gray, torn, granny panties, but no matter, the cat wasn't going to care.

I got Lumpy's back parts dry and turned him around with his head shoved firmly between my legs, me squatting over him in my lovely, lacy Suzy Slut bra and the gray, torn, granny panties. Lord only knows what it must have looked like I was doing to that poor animal. He struggled a bit, and I said to him (out loud of course) "I don't care if you don't like this. We are going to keep at it until I'm good and satisfied." I heard a sort of.... strangled sound. There on the front porch, looking in the front window which was open to let in the lovely spring breeze, was Reggie. Mouth agape, face full of horror he just sort of .... sputtered. Oh dear. I can only imagine what it must have looked like to him, and I'm forever grateful that he didn't call either the Humane Society or the mental health authorities.

Reggie disappeared hastily from the front porch. We never did get our mail that day.