tedwords

“Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.”
― Jeff Valdez

While Corb is getting his chandelier restoration business up and running (not an easy thing to do during a pandemic), he's been taking in a few odd jobs. One of them has been looking after an old cocker spaniel named Sophie.

Sophie's owner has for the past three years left her with us during the Christmas holidays, and this year left her with us because she fell in love online about eight months ago and flew to England to be with the guy for the holidays. Yeah, I know, height of the pandemic, mutant strain, traveling during the holidays. Fie on all that, what does it matter when you are in love, right?

What it reinforces for me every time we have Sophie for extended periods is that a) I am most certainly a cat, not a dog person and b) two dogs at the same time brings me to my doggy breaking point.

We love our pup Kyra, although she is super structured. She's a rescue pup that we saved from a bad situation and we cherish her, but she definitely has a routine for everything, morning through evening, and hounds us if things aren't on schedule. Still, it's kind of cute and doesn't get too stressful.

Sophie, on the other hand, basically has one goal in life when she is with us: get me to sit on our couch in the den. It is literally the only thing she is interested in. During work days, this isn't a big problem, because that's where I am situated most of the time. But on weekends and long vacations, when I want to do so much more than sit in the den, it can get really annoying, because she will literally stand in front of me and then try to sprint into the den, every five seconds.

This dog follows me...everywhere. When I go to the bathroom, she waits outside, trying to coax me into the den. When I go out she waits outside the front door, waiting for me to return. Plus, she craps everywhere and doesn't care. Needless to say, I am counting the days until her mother gets home.

In contrast, our cat Ping never annoys me. She is content to do her thing and only needs attention when it is dinner time or at the end of the night when she climbs onto our bed for about half an hour, demanding snuggles.

Ping is the kind of pet I most enjoy. Not really demanding, does her own thing, let's me live my life and she lives hers. Yes, she can get grouchy sometimes and bite me, which is something Kyra would never do, but even so, I'd rather take an occasional band-aid to the finger than the clattering of little dog feet behind me 24/7. Even so, I sure do like it when Kyra is laying next to me in the den at night, just relaxing with the pack.

I think it's important to cherish the pets in your life...but just as important, know your comfort zone with cats and dogs. Otherwise, it's not going to enrich either your lives...or theirs.