The night of the full moon

Should I be worried? Things are troubling me. My auntie veecee is sick. My Person has been humming a strange song about Camp Granada all day and then patting my head. I emptied the garbage bag out on the kitchen floor and she didn't get mad at me. There are TWO bags of cat food in the cupboard. What can this possibly mean?

The unknowable strangeness of cats

Cats. Of the many things I have learned about since I came to live here, the thing I have learned the most about and still understand the least is the cat.

I may have been a bit of a rube when I moved here. But now I can walk on a leash, sit and stay, do graceful u-turns and about-turns and come when I am called. Cats do not know any commands. They meander aimlessly through the day, stalking counters and refrigerator tops with impunity. They are willfully oblivious to commands of any sort.

The Encyclopedia of Dogs is divided by jobs and activities. Hunting dogs. Herding Dogs. But cats take no exercise and have little employment except a useless sort of make work that consists of sitting in the middle of the newspaper article their Person is reading, or crawling into unused cardboard boxes and sitting there for a very long time.

My communications are brief and to the point: the cheerful tail wag, the short bark of warning, the long bark of warning, and the growl of, well, warning. Plus the pant of laughter. Cat language is an unintelligible welter of mews, meows, mrows, growls, purrs, clicks, chatters, and snaky hisses.

One of the most confounding of their habits is their perpetual cleaning. Inside ears and between toes, tail tips and nose ends, they clean constantly. As a seasonal bather I understand the joy of a hard-earned patina of adventure. The grimy front paws from a good dig in the perennial garden or the sweet perfume of a roll in something past its prime can be enjoyed for a long time after the adventure itself has ended. Unless you are a cat and then you'll be too busy cleaning yourself to ever have an adventure.

Cats are pretty enough creatures and I do admire the way they can steal chairs while people are sitting on them, take over beds, sleep for up to 22 hours a day, get whatever they want by being haughty and sit staring at you from atop a door jam. But when it comes down to it, I just don't understand cats!

If only I were French...

...I would be inside that coffee shop with my Person. I would have my own chair perhaps, a croissant cut into bits and slathered with butter, a little au lait on my upper lip. I would rest my little white paw on my Person's arm and ask if I might have the rest of her pumpkin muffin. The server would air kiss me before I reset my beret and we'd be off on another adventure.

But instead I am left out here, my day a shambles. For now.

Pounce and Chase

Today started as a busy day. By 10 AM I had gotten in two naps, loped around the house several times with a squeak toy in my mouth and consumed an inadequate breakfast. I helped Ollie the cat with his choice of where to have his morning nap (up on the basement hot water pipes) by employing my popular pounce and chase maneuver. By the time I pressed my hard little nose into my Person's leg long enough to clue her in it was time for a walk, I had already reached a state of near total boredom.

But the walk was grand, and I found that my pounce and chase maneuver helps squirrels decide to climb trees. Being helpful feels great. It makes me happy to think about others and so I will spend my afternoon nap dreaming of other ways that I can help the world with Pounce and Chase!

Autumnal

Today I am a serious sort of little red dog. It seems like a seriously autumnal day. The wind is rushing through the high branches with a threat of what is to come. A solitary brown creeper spirals up a tree trunk. Leaves shiver on their stems and scuttle along the ground. The chipmunks have disappeared for the season and the birds that were hawking for bugs yesterday are nowhere in sight today. It is a day when children try out their Halloween costumes a few days early and a day when little red dogs bark at little red devils and witches because they don't recognize them as the kids next door.

It is a day that makes you wish you knew how to read. Or at least a day to be glad to live with a Person who knows how to read because today is a good day to curl up on the couch with a book.

Stranger than Pico

This is Pico, a Siamese cat, or so my Person says.
Looks a little washed out to me.



Come with me! I've found something even stranger. You have to see this!



Talk about washed out! Maybe it is a Siamese squirrel. (Click on the picture to see a larger version.)

Are we there yet?

Today is another day. And a gray and wet one. On some days, like today, I am a bit more reflective than usual. Today I ask an eternal question: "Are we there yet?"

And because I am a wise little red dog, I know that at any given moment we are INDEED there yet.

And because I am indeed a little red dog, I am going back to sleep now.

Rainy Thursday

What more can I say? Let me in!
I am a tough nut and I know I have squirrel incursions to prevent and intruders to scare off but even I need to curl up in a dry place. I notice none of my cat-brothers are out here. They are wrapped around radiators, resting on top of cushions and stretched on window sills. I don't envy them their lives of sloth but right now I am getting wet.

A, B and C

I am a dog. I tend to bounce between paired opposite states of being: Asleep or Alert, Bored or Busy, Cat-napping or Catapulting. You can continue the list because I have either Short-attention-span or Something-better-to-do.

My point, and I always have one even if it is just the tip of my tail, is that when I am bored or any of the more listless states, I can always find something more interesting than myself Outside.





Today I saw a Cooper's Hawk flying and a thrush sitting, and a bit of yellow where before everything was green.

The Outside world is Delightful and keeps me from being Dull.

An exciting day

The power went out with beeps from all over the house. I pinned back my ears in terror and hurtled from the warm spot I had made in the bedding. Luckily the lack of power forced my Person from her usual perch where she stares into a funny lighted screen while poking at a keyboard with two fingers. "Well," she asked, "ready for a walk?" My ears repositioned themselves and I jumped around the kitchen with joy and pasted Adric a good one. Off we went. No cats allowed.

It was raining a bit, and my person forgot our plastic bag. I did my dog thing and my owner, who has an enormous sense of guilt guiding her every move, cleaned up with some beautiful fall leaves. She washed her hand in a puddle, declared it "camping clean" and off we went.

Anyway, it was a grand walk and I mused that I am camping clean all over and that is good enough for me!

Connecting

Here is the rest of my post. I have had my Think. The important thing to me is to connect to the world around me. I use my nose a lot but you can do it other ways. But you have to go outside and look. There are large beauties in nature and small ones too. Nature is all around, not just in dramatic landscapes. And all of it needs to be protected. Everyone can find ways to help.

And going outside will help you do that thing that is so hard for people and so easy for dogs: be where you are, when you are.

Blog Action Day

"On October 15th - Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone's mind.

In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment."

My Person read about this in the newspaper and decided we should participate because the out of doors are important to us, and to everyone. So I will think about this when I have my daily outdoor adventure and then I will write about it later when I have had my Think. Meanwhile make sure you go outside today for a bit of time and think about what is around you, what you love about that place, whether it is the birds temporarily visiting your yard on their way south, the native trees in your neighborhood or the very air you breathe, and think about what you can do to protect those things. I am waiting now to start my adventure and I will be thinking about those things, and squirrels, as well!

My new family

They aren't so really new as I've been around here for a while now but I sure would like to introduce them so you'll understand if I complain about them. They are my half-brothers. Pico is the oldest and generally the best tempered. For a cat. He's pretty lazy and spends a lot of time in private contemplation. Here he is now followed by the other two, Adric and Ollie. Adric is a little bit of trouble. He is jealous of me and thinks he has a finer understanding of Fetch than I do. Ollie is pretty okay. I chase him. I think it is more fun for me than for him.