Month: January 2013

You know how most cats are so incredibly focused on their constitutionals that they will ignore you if you are in the room?  The litter box seems to be some sort of sacred space where no other sensory input is allowed.  Their eyes will glaze over slightly and they seemed lost in their own little world of excremeditation.

Sean noticed recently that his very consistent routine with Wanda had been unceremoniously interrupted.  Wanda used to spend the first part of the night snuggling under my arm, then when Sean would come to bed, she would switch sides and snuggle with him under his chin, butting the top of her head happily under it.  Then, after a while, she’d slip under the covers and spend the rest of the night under there.

Lately though, Wanda had stopped this routine.  What could Sean have done?  We knew that he hadn’t really changed his interactions with Otto, like I had, and he’s much more careful about saying anything that might offend Wanda.  Just this morning, he stopped me and made me take back a statement I made about how when Wanda squinches up her face, it makes her look like Duke basketball Coach K.  (My argument:  “She doesn’t even know who Coach K is.”  Sean’s reply:  “Yes, but you do, and that’s all that matters.”  Point taken.)  The only thing we can figure is that Sean has been sick lately, and he has a very loud cough.  Seriously, every exhalation sounds like he’s literally coughing up a lung, his stomach, and maybe even a kidney.  It was so bad that for a couple of nights, Sean slept in the guest room so I could try to get some rest.  Maybe this was what had offended Wanda?  Maybe she didn’t understand that he couldn’t help it, and thought all those guttural noises were Sean yelling at her?

So, the other night, Sean apologized to Wanda.  He was very sincere, and let her know that he didn’t do it on purpose, and he wasn’t yelling at her.  Wanda got that contemplative look on her face and seemed to be considering his offer of an apology.  For a moment, her blue eyes seemed sort of resigned and fatigued, sort of world-weary, like maybe she was just going to have to keep accepting these apologies from stoopid hoomans forever.  

At first, nothing seemed to have changed.  Then, that same night, Wanda came back to snuggle with Sean, and spent the next early morning snuggling with him, too.  She leaned in and looked up at him lovingly, and seemed to be smiling with satisfaction.

Coincidence?  I think not.  

I just love that when I have to get up early for work, and kiss my sleeping Mister Buddy on the head while he is still asleep, he wakes up purring.

It all started with this:

Otto wearing my cat scarf.  We realized he actually seemed to enjoy wearing it (Otto’s always cold), but…well…it’s a scarf.  It wasn’t going to stay on once he started moving around–not without a safety pin or something, and perhaps not even then.

So we went in search of something better–a sweater for Otto.  Our first attempt yielded this:

I’m sure it was warm, but I’m also pretty sure Otto found it mortifying.  (I can’t see why–it has a buttonable flap where his rear-end would be if he were a human–nothing humiliating about that, right?)  We took it back to CVS.

Otto then had a chance to model one of my Christmas presents–a scarf/hood combo with hand-warmers, to only slightly better effect:

Oh yeah…did I mention it has ears?  Clearly, this wasn’t going to work long-term, either.

In between all this there was a charcoal turtleneck sweater that kind of made Otto look like he was heading off to his beat-poetry performance.  And while his poetry is pretty good, his sweater was doing nothing to improve it.

Finally, we hit upon what we think is a winner.  It’s perfect:  soft, plenty of room, and will probably stay on him.  (We had to buy a dog’s size Medium (yes, MEDIUM) for that to work.  (What does that make Otto–Cocker Spaniel-sized?  Sheltie-sized?  Sheesh…)  Anyway, here it is!:

Perfect, right?  Fits him exactly, nothing embarrassing about it (pay no attention to the dog bone on his back), and won’t come off as soon as he starts moving.  Mission Accomplished!

As a humorous side-note, we attempted to give this sweater to Wanda, thinking that it might fit her well and Otto could use the Jack Kerouac sweater.  Wanda disagreed.  She slunk through the bedroom, clearly ticked off at us.  When several minutes went by and I didn’t see her, I started having dreadful thoughts that perhaps she had gone downstairs, gotten it caught on something and was now dangling helplessly from the stairs, waiting for a rescue.  How wrong I was about that.  I found her under the loveseat, about 20 feet from where we’d put it on her, with the sweater off to the side and Wanda hunkered down in what could only be called a fighting stance.  “Try to put that on me one more time,” her eyes seemed to be saying, “and there’s going to be trouble.”  I’ll be sleeping with one eye open for a while, I guess.

We kept the Sixties sweater, not because Otto loves it, but because he already pulled out a few threads, rendering it unreturnable.  Ah, well…those coffee shops can get chilly in the winter.