The pets all have pretty consistent personalities. Zeeke is the dominant, possessive male. Zoe is the submissive, over-reactive, anxious little girl. Merlin is a happy-go-lucky, playful, cuddly cat. But there are some situations where things are totally unexpected.

Take, for instance, the vacuum cleaner. Zeeke HATES the vacuum cleaner. In fact, he’s rather terrified of it. He totally freaks out every time it gets turned on (or at this point, when we even pull it out). If given half the chance he will bark insanely at it, then attack the hose… and he’s very very jumpy. He hates that thing and he thinks it’s going to come eat him in his sleep. I vacuumed the bedroom the other day while he was crated, and Zeeke was flinging himself at the crate sides, digging frantically at the crate floor, and trying desperately to rip into the thing.

We have a shop vac, by the way… that’s what we use. It’s noisy. So Zoe runs and hides right? WRONG! Zoe isn’t very affected by it, which is the weirdest damn thing. She freaks out at new boxes in the house, but she’s okay with a shop vac?? Well I mean she’s not “okay” with it - she doesn’t want it to get too close to her. Yet it doesn’t send her diving for cover, either. She just cautiously moves to the other side of the room. And the weirdest thing yet is that she gets totally ticked off with Zeeke when he flips out… SHE attacks HIM whenever he goes for the vacuum cleaner. Explain that one?! She’ll grab him by the cheek, growling. I don’t understand it one little bit, but she definitely does NOT like it when he flips out at it.

The cats don’t really seem bothered by the vacuum. They’ll jump out of the way, but that’s about it. They don’t flee the room either. Pretty easy-going cats.

::

Merlin’s oddness came out when he got sick. He’s Merlin, the easy-going, tote-me-around huggable dude. So I figured pilling him would be easy, right? HA. Apparently he HATES to be held down. He squirmed and scratched and drove me insane. This also translates to cutting his nails, I’ve discovered. He HATES having his paw held like that. He’s suspicious when you first touch his paw, he gives a little tug, and when he can’t get free he starts doing that cat-fish thing where they flop around in three directions at once. But with claws. Sharp claws, since I can’t seem to cut them. I finally got tired of the show and wrapped him in a towel like a burrito. He sure didn’t like that, but at least his claws got clipped.

And Jo, who was once my total punk, picking fights with cats and people and just being obstinate? Cutting his nails is no problem.

Well at least I’m learning.

Today Den stayed late at work and I decided to drive up to see him and bring him dinner. I also decided to bring a dog along with me.

I very briefly - VERY briefly - considered bringing Zeeke. And then I laughed at myself and locked him in his crate. Zeeke in a vehicle is bad enough as it is. Zeeke in a car, is worse. Zeeke in a new place when people are trying to work? That just doesn’t go together.

So I brought Zoe of course.

We get there and as soon as we get in the building I drop her leash, she knows where to go. So she slunk around the corner towards Den’s office. I am not really sure what she thinks may possibly happen to her in a deserted hallway, but obviously whatever it is really scares her.

I gave Den his dinner, popped open my laptop, and we sat there for about an hour and a half, working on “stuff” on our respective computers. Zoe layed on the floor and relaxed a little. (Just a little. But with her that is significant.) After a long period of silence I turned around. “This is what she does all day,” I said, gesturing to the dog laying on the floor directly behind the chair I was sitting in.

“Just like Zeeke does, right?” Den replied with a snort. We looked at each other, then laughed. Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what Zeeke does all day.

Zoe is so easy. Really, she is. I don’t think this baby that’s on the way will shake her up too much. She’s not going to be too thrilled about a new creature in the house that she cannot decipher - unless she places it in the same category as “cat,” in which case she’ll think it’s really awesome and can she play with it now? But most likely she’s going to skitter around and shoot me nervous “What the hell is that thing??” looks and take months to get used to the fact that it’s not leaving. But in terms of what she needs from me? Easy. She’ll happily lay at my feet when I’m nursing. She’ll follow me from room to room as I rock the baby to sleep. She’ll bark frantically at me if I am 2 seconds late serving her dinner, but I can deal with that.

Funny how she ended up being the lowest maintainance pet we have. Jo isn’t too bad either, he just wants food and some cuddles in the morning. The other two… well the other two are nuts. We won’t talk about them.

We’ve noticed lately that Zeeke and Zoe really don’t seem to play together much anymore. I also noticed that what “playing” they do involves Zeeke fitting Zoe’s entire head in his mouth. I don’t think she severely dislikes it… but I’m not so certain that she enjoys it, either. On the other hand, she does play with Merlin the cat…. and they beat each other up. I’ve never seen anything like it before…. I’ve seen Merlin licking her ear very cutely, grooming her…. right before he climbs on top of her and then starts biting her neck like he’s a big cat taking down gizelle. Of course this gizelle is quite large and really enjoys this game. They’re just strange.

Just now they (Merlin and Zoe) finished a wrestle match and she came over to snuggle with me for a few seconds. (Seconds is all she has for me!) Then she went and got a rawhide chew and layed down RIGHT next to the cat - facing him, in fact. The rawhide was inches from his head. I really don’t think she was trying to share it - she doesn’t share very well with others - but it was like she wanted to spend that time with him or something. Very odd indeed.

Zoe is adjusting very well to my pregnancy. She’s pretty low-maintainance, her playing with the cat on the bed beside me and then settling down to chew on a treat or a toy. Now that I have more energy I like to play with her a little bit every day, give her attention, tell her what a pretty girl she is. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I do or even what I do, as long as I’m focussed on her she’s the happiest girl ever. (Although that charactarizes much of her personality.)

The cats don’t seem to notice any difference - or don’t care if they have. They just want to be fed, and get attention. Jo solves this by standing in front of my monitor and refusing to move, and Merlin… well Merlin’s way of getting attention is by climbing on top of you and never giving up no matter how many times you shoo him off. Den can get quite annoyed by this constant yo-yo cat, which can go on for an excess of 10 minutes.

Zeeke… Zeeke doesn’t care as long as daddy is around to spend time with him. If daddy isn’t, however, he spends his time letting me know just how ticked off he is at my energy level and commitment to keeping him constantly occupied. OMG he drives me crazy barking at me. And there’s not much I could really do before, between the puking and the exhaustion and the work I still needed to get done in between, he was SOL until daddy got home. I really don’t know how Zeeke is possibly going to handle a new baby in a good way. He’s simply going to be ticked that we’re not paying enough attention to him.

So that’s my quick recap! We’re going to visit my parents over christmas, and we have booked the kennel and arranged with my work to watch the cats. I’m relieved. The kennel is expensive, but so worth it. The dogs come back to us SO happy and tired. They get such great attention there, time out with other dogs in the yard, they get to spend the entire time together. It’s perfect. It’s really really good that we have this kennel…. I don’t know how I’d leave Zoe otherwise!!

Reminder to self: NEVER buy the fish-flavored dog food again. Results in some stanky-ass dog breath (yes, worse than usual). Gag.

It is most definitely in shedding season here. It’s been a very strange year, weather-wise, and I guess it was all late getting started. But the warm weather is here, and Zoe’s coat is leaving in bucketfulls. I went outside with the undercoat rake again today and brushed the heck out of her. Our front lawn looks like a 50-cat-fight took place. Zoe is looking much slimmer than she did. I just hate seeing her look so scruffy with clumps of white undercoat sticking out all over, as if I haven’t brushed her in a year! She’s usually so sleek and shiny.

I also clipped her nails today. It’s one of those things I keep saying I need to do, but don’t do nearly often enough. It went fine. She would much rather have been running wildly around the yard, but she sat still okay for me. No whining or pulling away, just some argument when I wanted her to face my right and she wanted to look at something to my left and kept turning around. But honestly she’s very good. Oreo always obeyed fine when clipping her nails, but she always looked like I was torturing her and was surely going to use those clippers to remove her tail next. I don’t even know why she always behaved like that, as the only time I ever nicked a nail quick was when she was about 5 years old!

Having only previously ever clipped Oreo’s nails - all of which are black - I never really concerned myself with being able to see the quick. Black nails are pretty much proceed at your own risk - I’d err on the side of caution and trust that I would do just fine. And like I said, I only got the quick once. (And of course, it was right after I was explaining to Dad that cutting her nails was really easy and I’d never cut the quick. I think I scared him off from ever trying it himself.) But Zoe now, she has white and black nails. And you know, I prefer those white ones. Much less stressful, I must say.

Behavior-wise Zoe has been acting… well, not terrible. But not great either. I don’t know where my perfect little princess has gone, but I’m not so sure she’s coming back. Zoe is 2 now, and apparently somewhere along the way she picked up a little bit of confidence - which is a good thing! Unfortunately she also picked up some mommy doesn’t exist. She’s been frustrating lately. Outside on leash she behaves just horribly. It doesn’t seem to matter to her how many times she hits the end of the leash, she just keeps doing it! In fact I was injured last week by her and Zeeke (but mostly her). She clotheslined me with her leash across the back of the knees, while I was yelling at her to STOP! STOP! STOP!!!! I have two huge very PURPLE bruises now. So she and I are working on the commands such as STOP (which is supposed to mean STOP MOVING) and HEEL (which is supposed to mean STAY NEAR MOMMY). Right now I think she hears everything as “blah blah blah”.

She’s just very frustrating because she’s very hyper and yet very sensitive. She’s either over-stimulated and doesn’t listen to anything, or she shuts down completely and doesn’t listen to anything. You really have to be very firm, very calm, and very, very patient. I’m finding it difficult to find that balance.

But she is still the sweet, happy-go-lucky dog she’s ever been. In fact, she just brought me a very disfigured goose toy. I think she knew I was writing about her.

I need to take more photos soon, I’m afraid I’ve been direly slacking. We just haven’t been doing anything at all of interest around here.

On monday while I was at the pet store buying food for work I grabbed a duck plush toy for Zoe. Then, while standing in front of the kong display I selected a Kong Bounzer ball for Zeeke - don’t want him to feel left out or anything. Well, it’s a huge hit! It’s not something Zeeke can destroy (thank goodness - there are no tennis balls in this house for that very reason). And both of them seem to get a big kick out of throwing it around and watching it bounce. Neither one of them are really big on fetching, they like to just play solo… fine by me. It’s just amusing to watch Zoe “attack” it all growly.

Today we got home from a short evening out and I went in the bedroom to let the dogs out of their crates. I observed two distinctly different behaviors:

Zeeke didn’t even get to his feet until I’d opened his crate door. Then he stretched and yawned as he came out, headbutted me, and trotted out to the living room to find Denis. He than sat with his ears back and yawned again. He looked sleepy.

Zoe started moaning and barking as soon as I walked in the bedroom. I walked over to her crate and told her to be quiet before letting her out. She shot out of her crate like a bullet, sliding around the corner into the hallway, careening into Zeeke. She spent the next few minutes bouncing around the living room waiting impatiently for me to put her leash on and take her outside… or put some water in the bowl… or pay attention to her… or anything.

I turned to Den and asked him if he’s ever seen her sleepy or tired. We both thought for a minute and realized that no… we never have (at least not since we first got her as a puppy). Zoe is either asleep, or she’s bouncing around having a great time. There is no “in-between” for her. There’s no waking-up period. The first thing she does in the morning when she spies movement from one of us is to launch herself across the bed like a frog and land on hubby. (This can cause him some pain, depending on where exactly she lands! She knows better than to land on me.) It doesn’t matter if she just woke up. She immediately launches herself in great frenetic movement, bouncing and yipping and licking and happy happy to SEE you get up get up the day is here! If she pauses for a moment to, say, wait for me to drag my butt out of bed, she may stretch her legs.

I am just very very thankful that she has an excellent on/off switch, as I’ve mentioned before. Before bed she likes to wrestle with Merlin feriociously. I let her, even if it means they’re wrestling on top of me (that’s always fun) because it lets her get some energy out. She also has a fabulous ability to occupy herself by chewing on her toys and “beating them up” (which is a very amusing thing to watch, I must say). When I get in bed in the evening with my laptop, this is how she spends her time. And as soon as I turn off the laptop and lay down she jumps up on the bed, curls up, gives a sigh, and falls asleep. It really is that immediate, too. She might not fall asleep for a while, but she stops whatever she’s doing and closes her eyes at least.

I just found it odd, though, how she has two modes and bounces between them so easily. I’d love to be able to do that! Me, unfortunately… I’m a cranky beast when I wake up and take a long time to finally surface from that hazy fog of sleep.

It’s been too long since I posted.

First of all, two weeks ago Zoe and I drove into upperstate New York to visit with friends from the BC Rescue. Zoe crammed herself into the very small wedge-like area underneath one of the folded-down backseats and refused to move. I left her there for a while when we went out to eat.

When we got back from brunch I brought her into my friend’s house while we worked on a fundraising project. Zoe did pretty well, honestly. We were there for hours, and she spent the first half of that underneath the kitchen table by my feet. My friend’s dog was a little perplexed by this, as he kept walking up to her with a toy in his mouth, squeaking it provocatively. Zoe wanted nothing to do with him or his toy. He was positively crushed. (I played tug with him to make up for it!) It’s not really that Zoe’s afraid of other dogs - she honestly couldn’t really care less if he was there or not.

My friend also has two cats who hate dogs. She asked me first how Zoe is with cats. I told her - Zoe loves cats. But if they dont’ want to play with her then she leaves them alone. The first time she saw one of the cats she stood about 5 feet back and whined a bit. I think she knew right off the bad that this was not a friendly cat, but she still wanted to go up and say hi. A few hours into our visit the other cat poked his head around the corner down the hallway. I guess it started Zoe and she had no idea what it was - all you could see was a shadowy blob with glowing eyes - because she suddenly got to her feet and started growling in a very threatening way. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard her make a sound like that! I asked her what the heck was the matter and she seemed to make sense of it all. Soon as she realized it was a cat she started whining again. (The cat wasn’t very amused by it all.)

So we ended up being there all day, and Zoe did really really well. By the end of the day her tail was up. My friend had a bunch of stinky dog treats and Zoe decided she wasn’t all that scary if she gave out free treats. By the end of the day she was actually running over to her! Her tail was up in a relaxed manner even, just walking around sniffing things.

There was a very unfortunate pee accident on the floor though. :sigh: And that was totally my fault, as I didn’t realize how long we’d been there for.

All in all I think it was a positive experience. I’m not so certain Zoe would agree - she survived, but I’m pretty sure if asked to repeat it she would still vote for “No.” (Not like she has a choice in that!)

I have never seen a cat without a temper. In my experience, even the loviest cat gets pissed off if you do certain things. For some cats it’s touch their tail, for others it’s picking them up. For some it’s looking at them. Whatever it is, almost all cats have times where they put their ears back and take a swipe at you… or maybe they just lay there pissed off, swishing their tail.

But Merlin doesn’t get mad. I have never seen him get angry in any way. He has many moods, including psycho-crazy-kitten - a mood which is coming out far more frequently now that spring is approaching… He gets spazzy and attacks random objects (like shoes). He’s also a cuddle-bug and will spend hours on your chest purring and nuzzling you. But he never gets mad. I’ve seen a couple times where Zeeke has him pinned down and is practically chewing on him, and Merlin’s just laying there like a dead fish. Granted that’s a very smart thing to do with Zeeke - if you don’t react to him he does tend to give up most of the time. But still, what cat just lays there getting chewed on?

There are times when Jo and Merlin are playing, and Jo gets too rough. I don’t know why he does it, but it’s like he gets ramped up into attack-mode and he just starts pulling fur out. Pulling him off doesn’t help, he goes right back at Merlin. And what does Merlin do? “Meeep!” and runs away. And soon as Jo stops (which usually takes a brief time-out), Merlin’s back to his old self again.

Zeeke just started chewing on him again. Merlin actually gave a half-assed swipe at him. (It was more of a “Gee, stooooop!” ) I got Zeeke to stop. And Merlin? Is still purring.

He’s a lot like Zoe, except for the freak-out thing. Zoe only gets mad at Zeeke infrequently, when he gets too rough. That’s the only time I’ve seen her put on her bitch-face. Otherwise she still only has two modes: happy happy lovey-whee! and omg-it’s-going-to-eat-me!! That’s it. It does make training her rather difficult, though. Half the time she’s so ramped up she’s bouncing around practically unable to sit still like a child overdosing on sugar - and therefore not all that receptive to direction. But if you correct her even slightly too “harsh” she shuts off completely. It’s very frustrating.

Some things that are perfectly acceptable and understandable from wee puppies are not nearly as acceptable and understandable when coming from an adult dog.

Like puddles on the floor. If it’s a little puppy you really do expect that sort of thing and you know it’s not the pup’s fault. You just try harder to be a better mom, take them out more often. When Zoe was a pup I never complained about having to take her outside all the time. When Oreo was a pup I got up middle of the night every night, sometimes twice a night, to take her out. I could barely see through my droopy sleepy eyes, but I did it without complaint.

However when it’s a 2 year old dog that leaves a puddle on the floor that’s a different thing altogether. I’m really not so amused anymore by Zoe waking me up at 5am to take her out - she’s 2 years old, she ought to be able to hold it for an entire night.

Right now both dogs are being whiny. We got a major snowfall last night which means people are shovelling, snowplows are going by. Zeeke is barking a lot, and then subsiding into whiny whimpers when he realizes no one is going to let him out there. Then Zoe joins in. It’s a cacophony of twitch-worthy high-pitched whines. They’re driving me nuts! I know that there are exciting things going on outside… but Zeeke needs to learn that not everything is worthy of a 3-siren alarm. The snowplow does not need to be heralded with an intruder alert every single time it goes by. (Light forbid he stop in front of his house to scrape his windsheild, like he did last night.)

Plus right now Denis is outside shovelling the driveway. Zeeke does not like that. He hates it anytime Den goes outside without him, but for some reason shovelling snow is the worst. Zeeke goes freaking nuts if he’s allowed to see him through the window. So this is why we’re all locked in the bedroom for a while. Hopefully the dogs will get used to the sounds outside and just give it up for a while.