Tomato Sampling Expert

Less than five minutes ago I harvested my first Pink Brandywine tomato of the season.  I set it on the counter, and went upstairs to get my camera to document the occasion.

In less than a minute I returned to the kitchen, to find the tomato gone and my dog Llewellyn in the dining room having a last chomp.

You greedy beast!  So, was it good, sir?  Did it meet your expectations?

And don't you know tomatoes are supposed to be bad for you?

Sheesh.

A Seedy Post

The birdfeeder is outside my dining room window. To get to it you have to go out the door on the other side of the house, around the front, and back along the other side to where the feeder hangers from its wrought iron shepherd's crook.

There's still a lot of snow on the ground. Deep snow, that I don't want to tromp through.

I have, not a ten-foot, but a four-foot pole, with a hook on the end, that I made for fishing things out from under bushes (mostly plastic grocery bags that the wind blows out of my dog-doo collecting stock on the back porch. But I anticipate). This winter I have discovered, that if I open the dining room window and lean out, this pole is long enough for me to hook the birdfeeder, fetch it in, refill it, and hang it back on the crook.

(This may explain why my natural gas bill was so high last month, but let's not think painful thoughts.)

On Friday, I fetched the feeder in and poured in the mixed seed from the big popcorn tin under the window. I hung the suet holder on the plastic hook under the feeder, then, having placed the feeder bale on my pole hook, I leaned out, out, out the window to hang it up.

Oopsie!

This time, I missed. Feeder and suet cage crashed to the ground. And this time I could've used a ten-foot pole.

Rats. Gotta go out in the snow regardless.

Picked my way along the partly-thawed strip along the front border and crunch, crunch, crunch into the side yard. Where I discovered that the plastic hook on the birdfeeder was broken.

Oh, well. I hung the suet holder on the shepherd's crook, too, and came back inside.

1. Where I discovered that
   I had neglected to put the lid on the birdseed tin before I went outside, and


2. There was a biiiiggggg dent in the birdseed and scads of millet and sunflower seeds and cracked corn scattered across the floor, and


3. Llewellyn was happily helping himself to it all.

If I had any question that it was he who'd caused the birdseed level to drop so precipitously, it was settled in a few hours when I took him out to do his business. You'd think my dog had turned into a canine seed drill. Doubt the birds will want them any more, sauced as they are with essense of doggie digestive tract, but I do have to wonder if any of this stuff will sprout when Spring finally comes.

After all, it works that way with birds.

Degrees of Diffidence

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, is even now sitting on my lap, kissing my chin.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, is helping herself to the Cheez-Its in the bowl on my computer table.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, tries to help herself from my plate at the dining room table, practically every time I sit down to eat.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, pounces on me every night after I've pulled up the covers and turned out the light, stalks up my body, finds my face and kisses me goodnight, then curls up next to me and settles in to sleep.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, blocks my path in the morning as I come up the stairs from the shower in the basement, insisting I pet her every three or four risers.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, has learned the word "Treats!" and comes running to join her four-legged siblings wherever the goodies are on hand.

Gwenith, my shy pink floofy kitteh, is currently lying over my left wrist as I type, wondering why I ate all the Cheez-Its and didn't save any for her.

She still runs and hides when any visitor comes; except on the stairs she still won't let me reach down and pet her; she still insists that any advance she makes be at her own initiative and while I am sitting, lying down, or otherwise restricted. But considering where we were a few months ago when she'd run if I barely looked at her, I'd say this was progress.

The Just Deserts of Greed

This is-- or was-- a coupon for dog treats. I pulled it out of Llewellyn's food cannister a couple nights ago and put in on the table till I could see what it was for.

Next morning, I came downstairs and found it in shreds, scattered across the dining room floor!

I tried to put back together, but too many pieces were missing. Llewellyn, old boy, wii haedid uz a ttreetz koopon, butt U eatid it!

So it went in the trash for tomorrow's pickup. O doggie, my goggie, now we'll never know if these were treats of bloomiferous scrumptuosity. It's back to finishing the same old nuggets from the Three Dog Bakery. Foiled by your own precipitous greed!

(And my naivete.)

(Though being such a nice momma, I did save you a wee piece of turkey from Thanksgiving at my friends' . . . )

Chocolate-Eating Dog Update

Going by what I read tonight on line about toxic-level dark chocolate doses for dogs, my Llewellyn has apparently dodged a bullet. Again.

(He did this before with half a bag of semi-sweet morsels a year or more ago.)

Meaning, I haven't observed the more serious symptoms of theobromine poisoning described. Last night, I had to pull an all-nighter to work on my final AutoCAD class project, and he lay quietly on the floor under my computer chair, as usual.

Right now, he's chilling out on the downstairs sofa, just shedding, as usual.

No unusual hyperactivity, no tsedrayt behaviour; he has a regular appetite, everything is mostly as usual.

Really, I notice no effects out of the ordinary-- except a heightened urgency to get out the gate to do his business.

Which he is doing with alacrity. I won't get clinical, but going by the list of typical theobromine toxicity symptoms, it's not half as bad as it could be.

But oh my gosh, am I going to have to redouble vigilence or what? Makes me wonder if the plastic chicken fencing I got last year to keep him out of the dining room during Christmas cookie making will work this time around. He's so determined to chow down on anything quasi-edible he can get.

Though if I will leave candy and snacks on the hallway bench, that doesn't pose him much of a challenge . . .

__________________________________________

(I didn't ask the tech at the vet's about it when I dropped Gwenith and Huw in for their spay and neuter operations this evening. Being an Official Poor Person for the nonce, I'm getting it done through a low-cost program that's not patronized by my regular vet. Didn't seem right to sneak in questions about the dog when my only business with this new practice is to get the kittens done.

Though if I'd remembered the toxicity proportions better, I might have asked anyway. 3.5 ounces is really pushing it, even for a dog of Llewellyn's size.)

I Am a (Half-Asleep) Idiot

I arrived home from work this evening to find this scene in the front hall:

Before I got the light on I was preparing to find the philodrendon and its pot in shards and shreds on the floor.

What it was was quite as bad, from a dog health point of view.

You see, I flew to my mom's for Thanksgiving, and got home last night. I bought an 85% cacao chocolate bar at the airport to eat on the plane, but it was too bitter. No problem, I'd do some cooking with it.

Or not.

This morning, after maybe two hours of sleep (up late doing homework I couldn't get to while I was gone), I did the bat out of Hades bit trying not to get to school toooooo late. I really, truly, really intended to stuff the dried banana chips and the beef jerky and the trail mix snacks back in my bookbag and take them with me . . . And I'd forgotten all about the chocolate bar in its sack, which I guess I must've shifted out of the bookbag and laid on the hall bench . . .

So ten hours later, I return home-- to food wrapper chaos. Including the chocolate wrapper that I homed in on and picked up right away. Oh, no!

If Llewellyn were a little dog, I would be freaking out. Chocolate is bad for dogs' hearts, and the darker it is, the worse. But if Llewellyn were a little dog, that 3.5 ounce bar would have done its dirty work long before I returned to the scene. But at nearly fifty pounds, the only thing apparently wrong with my greedy mutt was that he'd gobbled down every flake and chip of that chocolate and those snack foods and was still nosing amid the debris, unwilling to accept that there simply wasn't any more.

No point in making him throw up. He probably got at it as soon as my key was out of the lock at 8:00 AM. He seems okay so far. No more hyperactive than normal; in fact, he's as usual, quite content to lie at my feet while I work at my computer.

But someday, someday, that dog is going to eat himself into real trouble. And I have got to stay awake enough to prevent it.

Pecking Order

Let's figure this out:

The kittens Huw and Gwenith openly steal food from nine-year-old Rhadwen's bowl.

Rhadwen blatantly steals food from my plate.

So where does that put me in the household pecking order?

(Llewellyn I don't allow to eat till after I do, but that's only because he hasn't yet worked out how to pry the lid off the dog food tin . . . )

This Should Not Be!

This is Huw eating out of Rhadwen's bowl this evening-- and Rhadwen letting him! A little later, Gwenith jumped up and did the same!

The kittens do not need to be eating her Senior food!

And to be fair, she does not need to be slipping into the Kitten Room and licking up the leftovers of their canned kitten dinner!

I took the water pistol to both the little upstarts. We'll see if it works.

The Top Cat Wars

Huw is nothing if not gutsy. And he appears to have dreams of dominance and glory. Here he is yet again nosing into Rhadwen's dish:

Rhadwen, in her placid middle age, seems to acknowledge his ambitions. The times she's come into the Kitten Room, it's Gwenith she approaches and hisses at. Rivalry against a fellow female? Or a desire to avoid the little tiger-striped tabby, who would like nothing more than to set himself up as Top Cat?

Though to be fair to Rhadwen as Queen of the House, this evening she did not permit the young pretender to eat out of her bowl. Blasted digital camera lag lost her reaction, but oy! it was unmistakeably clear.

An Unexpected Development

On the theory that cats will associate good things with the place where they eat, today I fed Rhadwen breakfast outside the Kitten Room, with the door open, so she could see the interlopers-- I mean, her new brother and sister-- while she ate.

And not just ordinary dry kibble, either, but nice, moist, fishy tinned food contributed by my neighbor Eileen*, a cat person who can't have cats because her teenaged son is violently allergic.

So there Rhadwen is, one eye on the kittens, the other eye on her saucer, eating her meal. And out marches Huw, bold as brass, and starts eating out of her dish! And Wennie backed up and let him!

No, I do not have pictures of this. Camera wasn't handy. But that's exactly what that three-month-old upstart did!

In a case like this, I do not care what the books and websites say about letting the cats arrange these issues for themselves. The kittens are not eating out of my senior cat's bowl. Especially not when it's tinned food that's too rich for them. I do not wish to be cleaning up piles of kakk on the rug.

So I pulled Huw back and distracted both him and his sister with a bowl of their own kitten kibble. And the respective breakfasts were finished in peace.

But now Rhadwen is going to associate special food with its being stolen? Life is shaping up to be interesting here in the Valleys.

To give an idea how it went down, here's yesterday's dry run of the food-association exercise:

The sniffing you hear is Llewellyn, shut in the front bedroom.

Greedy paw by Gwenith. She's not as in-your-face brazen as her brother. She prefers the sneaky guerrilla approach.

_____________________________

*Made up name

Rhadwen Takes Advantage

Being a cat, Wennie has an eye to the main chance. She knows when something is up, and if she can get in on the bargain, she drives it home with all her might. That is, if she feels like it.

In this case, she knows Llewellyn is being trained. She knows he doesn't get his breakfast or his dinner unless he sits and stays while I go across the room and fill up his bowl. I have to set the bowl down on the table to put the lid back on the dog food tin. And that's where Rhadwen siezes her advantage.

Up she jumps on the table, and she's got her face in the dog's dish, chomping away, before I can get the lid centered on the can.

(Now, Llewellyn does get his turn at this game. Rhadwen gets fed on top of a bookcase, to keep the dog out of her food. And he's figured out how to tease her so badly that she knocks the dish onto the floor. Pieces of kibble go flying, and guess who gets the most of it?

(And what the dog doesn't gobble up goes down the register.)

But now Wennie has found a new way to get her own back. Tonight I tried leading Llewellyn around the house with his leash attached to his Halti collar, around and around from kitchen to hall to front room to living room to dining room to kitchen and around again. Rhadwen figured out that if she sat on a certain dining room chair, she was in the perfect position to whap him with her claws every time he came around. She obviously knew he was under restraint and couldn't hit back!

If you're wondering why I didn't stop this feline agression, it's because Llewellyn never seemed to feel it. I wonder if that's because his coat is so thick. Or was Rhadwen only playing, and thought he should know what she could do if she really wanted to?