a much more eventful night than anticipated

[cimorene]

We ran out of dogfood yesterday evening and catfood in the middle of the night, so of course all the critters started begging around midnight after the Crazy scarfed the last catfood, then barfed it back up in the furtive water bowl. I was awakened by the dog's urgent-yet-muted Waking Mommy Woof and followed him, half asleep, into the living room, where he stuck his head on the coffee table (the location of the furtive water, because the Crazy won't deign to drink from anywhere else in the house except a glass intended for a human) and ate the barf, and then got so excited that he had a little accident on the floor. (I know it was an accident because he didn't even try to go to hallway where he used to pee.) So I fumbled into two pairs of socks, boots, scarf, hat, fleece jacket and parka to take him outside, and for the rest of the night the Crazy sat on both of us in turn, which is her way of begging. When we finally gave in and got up, we discovered she'd pooped on Ludde the sheepskin in protest. (Fortunately, Ludde is a machine-washable Ikea sheepskin.) So at ten or so we pulled on our billion layers (-7°, feels like -13° C) and went to the store to buy pet food before even drinking a cup of tea, and when we got home and I fixed my tea and oatmeal and sat down to turn on the computer, Darth Vader the monitor would not turn on. His touch-sensitive power button was not responding even though his adapter was green-lighted! I unplugged him from the power bar and plugged him back in, at which point he came to life and all is now okay except that in the monitor panic I overbrewed my Earl Grey :(.

Comments

[pierydys]

I shouldn't be laughing at this... except that we've been known to trudge across the street at odd hours for bags of kitty litter and emergency food runs as well. We occasionally try to feed them deli meats or canned fish to buy some more time, but Misu is a confirmed carboholic and only likes kibble. Unfortunately, she's also the one that makes life more difficult, being a persistent toe biter and yowler when hungry. Oy, furballs.

[cimorene]

Hahah! The Crazy loves meat, but we don't eat a lot of meat and I only buy deli meat when I'm craving sandwiches. The BB is too picky for that though! Perry is less picky - I often give him cornflakes, cooled oatmeal, rice, or cooked or uncooked pasta when I'm running out of dogfood. But yesterday we didn't have any appropriate cereal, and I don't really want to feed him just starch for too long anyway! He hates veggies...

[pierydys]

It's funny how critter can develop such specific preferences... and really kind of annoying too. And the worst part is, I'm pretty sure it's just because they're spoiled and can afford to be picky :-P

Misu will only eat carbs unless she's seriously starved. She pretty much went from family to foster home to us, with only two siblings, so has always had her way. She occasionally will take cooked veggies if fed by hand, too, but she doesn't touch meat, eggs, fish, dairy.... just about anything a cat should. We suspect she might have been a reject from some genetics lab and has a large chunk of squirrel in her DNA. It'd certainly explain the tail.

Coco eats everything, thank goodness -- mostly because she had a bit of a rough-and-tumble early life (in the 'hood... literally) and probably had to fight with multiple cats for scraps. In fact, we're thankful that she hasn't developed any overeating disorders as a result -- we can safely leave food out for both the whole day and trust that they won't gorge themselves sick.

As for dogs... well, maybe when we get a bigger place. But back when I was younger and we had the backyard zoo, it got really crazy because the dogs loved eating the rabbit food, the rabbits would steal the cat and dog dry food, and the cat preferred to steal people food. And then there was the bunny who once drank beer and jumped into the middle of a pizza....

PS. Did you get my overly long email? Is there an ETA on when we should be expecting you guys Saturday?

[cimorene]

Your pizza-and-beer bunny should be some kind of mascot for a frat house. In fact, there were some frat members at Amherst who were sharing a campus house with me (it was a campus that banned frats, so of course they would own a party house off campus, but depending on size, not all of them would live there). Considering what I know about frats, actually, these guys were relatively quiet and good housemates, just a bit slobby in the kitchen and livingroom, but it wasn't like bodily fluids and stuff, just the occasional molding sock/beer cups left on the floor/dishes in the sink for a week.

Anyway, I think Perry is just spoiled too, but I've met dogs who liked veggies before. Maybe it's just his tastebuds!

And speaking of spoiled, yesterday the Crazy woke both Wax and then, later, me, and when I got up Wax had already filled the food and water, so I had no idea what she wanted... until I saw that her current sleeping nest was destroyed! It consists of a throw pillow with a fleece blanket spread over it, and then that 5' long stuffed Ikea alligator curled up into a ring around the edge of it. She sleeps in the middle of the alligator ring with the corner of the blanket tucked in around her usually, and in her efforts to crawl in between blanket folds overnight, she'd kicked the alligator off onto the floor. She was moaning and whining because she no longer deigns to sleep on merely a cushion and fleece without her alligator pillow. Ahahahhahaha.

And yes, I got your email! In my usual faily Tuesday brain death from the weekly 5-hour trip to Pargas, though, I forgot to ask Wax about times. She's got Friday off though, so I'm (still) looking into bus times, but that's probably the major constraint.