Black Doggerel

Whenever my back is turned the dogs destuff sofa cushions. It's got to where there's no longer enough cushion left to stuff the stuffing back into.

This is totally a metaphor for my entire life.

One of my damn fucking shithead pets has destroyed my Cunning Hat. I don't even know which one it was*. It was hanging on the godsdamned fucking COAT RACK where it should have been fucking well out of fucking reach, and I just found a piece of it on the dog couch, all spitty, and the bulk of it on the cat bed with a bloody great hole in the side.

I'm having to sit very still on my chair not to go and kick anyone. I'M SORRY PETUNIA. I SWEAR I THOUGHT THEY COULDN'T REACH IT. I LOVED THAT FUCKING HAT. It's not even like any of them has a history of tearing my clothes up or anything; this just completely blindsided me.

Just when it's cold enough that I've been actually wearing it too. :/






*Spike.

obnoxious dog-fox habit: pissing on any random dog-smelling objects they come across, such as empty plastic bottles that have been collied and abandoned.

obnoxious Spike-dog habit: playing with random interesting objects he comes across on walks, such as the same empty plastic bottle he played with and abandoned yesterday. Spike likes to be at eye level with his humans as much as he can so playing means bouncing off my chest with object in his mouth until I either play tug or throw with it or ignore him successfully.

so that's why I now smell of fox piss. repeated scrubbing with lavender soap has not entirely shifted it yet.

So I got sick of the current bout of insomnia and fought back. Took half a melatonin, somewhat against my better judgement. Fell asleep at 3am. Woke up with Spike bouncing on my chest and barking in my face at 3 fucking pm. This would be why I don't take these things very often. I still feel like I've got a bag over my head, but I guess I made up for some of the sleep deficit.

Fucking Spike knocked a box of mini double choc chip muffins off the table and Squish ate two-thirds of them while I was in the toilet. There's not enough chocolate in that to worry about poisoning a dog his size (he's stolen chocolate before and I know he's not all that sensitive to it) but I bet it's enough to give him the shits. Also I was really fucking looking forward to those muffins. Bastard dogs.

Dear Dogs and Cats -

They're not a tug toy. They're not a cat swing. They're not - I'm looking at you, Squish - food. THEY ARE MY DAMN UNDERPANTS. LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE PLSTHX.

P.S. Spike - cold nose to the top of the thigh also not funny.

Finally had my doctor's appointment about the knee today. The knee is actually not too bad right now - I can stay on my feet a good forty minutes without limping, although I can feel the instability in the stretchy bits round the kneecap (which I think is the anterior cruciate?), and I have to walk carefully. It's much better with Squish on the harness and long line - he has enough freedom of movement that he doesn't feel the need to jerk me off my feet. But it still needs looking at. My doctor's referred me to the orthopaedic department to get it looked at, MRI'd and - I dunno what they'll do next.

I shut the cats in the bedroom if I have to go out without the dogs. I trust my dogs absolutely not to harm my cats deliberately, but Spike is excitable and annoying, Squish is guardy and jealous, they're both a lot bigger than cats and I don't trust Murphy's Law. So they're only all together when I'm there to supervise.

So when Mum comes to pick me up, of course there's always one cat that hides under the couch. Spike goes all herdy and pins cat under couch, Squish gets all incensed because OMG YOU CANNOT COME NEAR MY COUCH, cat (Hamish on this occasion) gets freaked by all the dog commotion and won't come out from under the couch until I take the sofa cushion off and poke cat in the backside. Cat shoots into kitchen and I have to intercept him swiftly before the now thoroughly overexcited dogs drive him back under the couch. So of course I didn't notice Squish's bone falling off the couch (where it wasn't allowed to be in the first place) and I step on it, barefoot and with all my considerable weight. OW OW OW FUCKING OW. The sole of my foot is one great big magenta-and-indigo bruise, with a hole in the middle where the bone had a pointy bit, and now I'm limping on my other leg. Not. Happy.


Mum and I cheered ourselves up by shopping on Holdenhurst Road where the little foreign food shops are. Bought spare rib sauce and char sui sauce and prawn crackers and a litre bottle of light soy at the Asian food shop, and a big garlicky phallic kielbasa at the Eastern European food shop. I wish to hell we had some fun shops like that round here.

Saffron cat got spayed yesterday. Stitches are looking good and now that the grogginess has worn off, she's showing no sign of even knowing the incision's there. Three cats done, one to go!

arrrgh! that knee was almost better!

well, not almost better. but it was improving. but Squish just yoinked me on a patch of slippery ground. the knee (the BAD knee) bent the wrong way and just exploded with pain.

ow ow ow ow fucking ow bastard horrible dogs.

one slightly used singing pointer going cheap. anyone?

Gah. We're in the Woodland Walk, I'm throwing the ball for Spike, and I have Squish on a longish leash so he can poke through bushes and smell things and bounce around. Every few minutes I recall him for bits of sausage. He's getting better at this.

Spike goes to check out a scent that Squish finds interesting and drops his ball in the shrubbery somewhere. This happens pretty much every day, and what I do is ask him where it is and he retraces his steps till he finds it. It can take a while. Spike has a short attention span and isn't a finding-things dog by nature, but I got sick of buying him new balls (he can't have tennis balls, and his special soft rubber balls need a trip to Pets At Home, two bus rides away) so now I keep him at it till he damn well finds it.

Only this time Squish, on-leash, found it first. And he was so pleased with himself. Until the Wrath Of Spike came down on his poor lil' head like a Reaver on speed. AAAAARGH.

No one's bleeding, but the whole thing just kills me. Squish just wants to play ball too.

Also, the cats knocked over the water bowl while I was out, and my knee really fucking hurts.

I don't know if they're trying to kill me or themselves sometimes.

It's morning. I am sitting peacefully, slowly coming awake with my coffee, and I hear CRASH, THUD, BARK! coming from the hallway. That can't be good.

I go to investigate and Spike is barking at the utility room door. I try and open the utility room door and CAN'T. This is because Naamah and Saffron have got in there (and I swear that door was shut. I think I may need a bolt for it.) and pushed the boxes and the cat carrier (and very likely themselves) off the top of the freezer so that they wedge the door shut from inside. This is the second time Naamah's pulled this stunt, and I'm fairly sure it's deliberate now. I think she likes the adrenaline rush of getting inside the box and then pushing it off the five-foot drop to the floor.

It took me ten minutes to wangle the door open without crushing any cats. Naamah was especially unhelpful, because she LOVES the utility room - so many ways she can break things and hurt herself in there! - and didn't want to leave.

the cats are fine. The cat carrier, however, no longer has any of the plastic catches needed to hold its door on.

*headdesk*

And that's only the first chapter. I put everything back, dug my socks out from behind the fridge and went to take the dogs for first morning walk.

Spike gets frustrated walking on-leash with Squish, because Squish wants to mosey along slowly, investigating every passing scent in depth, stopping to eat grass and taking up to half an hour to make up his mind where to crap. He can't crap on concrete or tarmac, but he hates crapping in long grass (it tickles his sensitive little bumhole), wet grass, wet leaves or anywhere with a trace of interesting scent that might be diluted by fresh crap.

So while CSI Squish is painstakingly analysing every inch of ground we pass, Action Hero Spike is dancing with impatience on the end of the leash, spinning in circles, kicking dirt in Squish's face, playing leash tuggy, going through my pockets and hunting frantically for anything to make those endless agonising seconds pass faster. And I am caught in the middle. Imagine being handcuffed to both Gil Grissom and Jack Bauer while they try and hunt down a criminal together - yeah. Welcome to my dog walk.

Sometimes Spike is really lucky and finds a random object he can designate as a toy. It makes his morning to grab a stick or a discarded plastic bottle and bounce at me with it, or toss it in the air and catch it in his paws and teeth, or just shred the hell out of it if he's feeling especially 'splodey. I don't really mind it; it makes me laugh and I can use those play moments to practise "let go" and give things back to him and - well, it's fun.

Except when his happy fun found object of the day is a fucking four foot long fallen fence slat studded with fucking pointy NAILS. ARRRGH.

Bless him, he put it down immediately when I told him NO. Bastard he might be, but he has an unerring sense for when I really mean what I say. Love my collie.

( Mwahahaa!!! )

...so I went to the toilet in the middle of posting this and heard an almighty CRASH from the kitchen. They always, unfailingly, wait till I'm immobilised with pants round ankles to pull this crap. When I got to the kitchen Cassie was sitting on the kitchen windowsill with a smug expression and the floor was ankle-deep in coffee grounds, dog combings and the nasty sludge that I pick out of the sink strainer. Cats suck.

Yes, I have to keep the kitchen garbage can on the windowsill, because otherwise Squishy McSpotted-Scavenger waits till I'm on the toilet, overturns it all over the floor and makes himself sick eating the contents. Dogs suck too.

The ideal solution would be to put the fucking thing into one of the kitchen cupboards, of course. But the dear lovely men who fitted the new kitchen cupboards put shelves in every single one, so none of the cupboards will hold anything taller than about ten inches, and my countertops are crowded with bottles of squash, cooking oil, fish sauce, plum sauce and soy sauce that I'd much rather be able to put away. Kitchen fitters suck.

Did I leave anyone out? Don't worry, I'm sure you suck too. ;)