Dog and Cat

I have a dog and a cat.

No.

I have a dog.

There is also a cat at our house.

No.

I live at the cat’s house with my dog.

That’s what my cat told me I should say.

The dog is perpetually looking to me to see what’s up.

The cat will let me know what’s up.

The dog waits for a bowl of dog food each morning and night.

We take her out on a leash to do what she does on the lawn near the tree line.

We don’t have to pick it up.  We’re in the country.  No sidewalks.  No plastic bags necessary.

She likes finding sticks to chew up.  She’s a golden retriever who will walk around happily with a chew bone for three days before making a tooth print in it.  She has 6 stuffed toys that she’s had for over 2 years with nary a loose stitch or missing eye.  But give her a stick outdoors and she rips into it like she’s making toothpicks.

The cat owns me.

The cat opens all the cabinet doors in the kitchen when his bowl's empty.  There is no mistaking his meaning.  His food is not stored in the cabinets, so I'm not sure where he got the idea to do that, but I guess he knows ours is in there.  So if we still want ours, we'd better get him some of his own now.
The cat gets his food in a little bowl that is barricaded by three kitchen chairs so the dog won’t eat it (otherwise we go through the cabinet issue again).  The cat can have some any time he wants.
We have to round up chairs if we have guests.  If the dog paced herself, she could have dog food all day like the cat has cat food, and we could have chairs to sit in that weren’t all huddled around a cat’s bowl.  But it doesn’t work that way.  Like my brothers and my sister and I when we were kids - the boys would finish their food and eat all the extras before we could finish ours.  I have a weight problem now. They had a wait problem then.  Anyway, that’s not about the dog and cat.

The cat does his business in the litter box in the guest bathroom.  Although we are out in the woods, he is an indoor cat. Cars and trucks are safe from running over him, but hawks, owls, eagles, ferrets, foxes and coyotes are looking for cats for dinner.  So he stays inside and uses the litter box.  He tried to train me to let him use the bathroom sink and tub.  I would have been okay with the toilet, but no…He almost had me trained, until I filled the sink and tub with water so he wouldn’t be able to use those spots.  It was still a problem if we had guests though.  Then I came up with the perfect, perfect…I mean perfect solution.  Glade Air Fresheners!  The ones that sense when you go by… Well, they sense when a cat has jumped into the tub or sink and make a hissing noise and spray a beautiful smell into the air!  Cats hate it!  At least our cat hates it so far, and they've been there for months.  Clean sink and tub, fresh air in the bathroom!  I win this round.

Cats are funny creatures - not too bright, but just bright enough to challenge the brightest of humans.  So I’m expecting any day to come home to a cat party in the bathroom, with Glade Air Freshener batteries dropped in the toilet, kitty litter in the sink and the dog barricaded in the corner with her empty bowl.