In Retrospect, Parts 1 & 2

In retrospect (Part 1), asking my mom to get DQ the "High School Musical" game for her birthday may not have been the best idea. Not only do I now have every song from the two movies memorized and playing on permanent shuffle in my head, I've been subjected to DQ's renditions of all of them. If you watch the video, you can see for yourself just how upset our cats are by this unfortunate turn of events. They thought they were the only ones permitted to sound like someone was running them over. And even then they only make noises like that when out of food or I've tossed them off yet another pile of clean clothes.

If you were wondering how I was able to video DQ singing without her knowing, I did it by using my regular digital camera instead of the camcorder and just leaving it sit on a shelf. Please ignore the mess, and no picking on our Charlie Brown-esque Christmas tree.



In retrospect (Part 2), I was right that watching Toby might not have been the best of ideas. The dog sitting started last night and it’s been tons of fun already. E dropped the dog off around 9pm and I already had the cats outside, so that part was OK. Things went downhill the moment she left. It was raining and the cats wanted to come back inside, not knowing what awaited them. I brought in Duchess - DQ's tortoise shelled persian cat - first. She's usually the shier of our two cats, but she still has her front claws. Anyway, she did pretty well holding her ground for the most part. She didn't seem shocked he was there, instead she hissed and threatened to bat him upside the head when Toby came running up. But later on, she forgot herself and began strutting the living room. Toby took that as an open invitation, and Duchess made the mistake of running. The game was on. Toby chased her around the house twice before she ended up under my bed with the dog stuck halfway out. After separating the two (the dog from the bed), we decided it best to leave the other cat outside until bedtime. Once the kids went to bed, we left GB's cat, Oreo, in his room with the door closed and Duchess in DQ's room in the same fashion for the night. Then Toby slept at the foot of my bed after trying twice to climb on. That worked well, until this morning.

GB got up around 6am for school and took Toby for a walk. When he got back, I figured I'd let the dog get some exercise and let him run around the backyard. I had done some inspecting of the fence and decided that the gaps underneath the fence were small enough that Toby would not be able to fit through. I was wrong. There was a squirrel out there that I hadn't seen and Toby took off after it. The squirrel bolted and went under a one of the small gaps that I had just inspected. And Toby went right under after him. Not only did he fit, it never slowed him down.

So I spent 10 minutes driving around my neighborhood looking for him. Thankfully one of my other neighbors was out walking their dogs a couple of blocks away and Toby decided to join them. He decided it looked like fun and stuck with them on their walk so I got him back without too much trouble. (And by trouble I mean that my neighbors noticed I drove around looking for this dog while sporting a major case of bedhead, a black zipper front hoodie sweatshirt without a shirt underneath, a pair of grey and blue plaid pajama bottoms, and a pair of brown docksiders on my feet. They commented that they now understood why I was still single...)

Anyway, Toby's back in his crate now and he won't be getting anymore free time in the yard. Hopefully the cats will take to torturing him while I'm at work. That would make me smile, just as taking this picture of Toby all apologetic and stuff did...