eliot (pre & post shave)

yellow

stevie

dags

dogs n cats n us

the cats seem to be coming around. for the last several evenings, yellow has been coming downstairs and communing a little bit with the dogs. they sniff each other and if steve or dagmar get too close, yellow hisses and they immediately back off. so it seems to be going well.

and last night eliot, perhaps because he so badly wants to go outside, ventured downstairs too while the dogs were out of their crate. there was a bit of sniffing and hissing. eliot went from me to under a chair and there was some circling, but all in all it was good. eliot gets shaved today (he needs it!) and i think that will make him more comfortable in general.

dagmar is growing fast and soon he might not be able to fit under the front gate (at the moment we have makeshift barricades across gaps in the fence and under the gate). at that point, we might start allowing eliot outside access.

still, though, the dogs are getting kara up between 12 and 2 in the morning for a pee and/or a poo, and again at about 4. sometimes i wake up for the midnight relieving but i always wake up with the 4 o'clock one. so neither of us has gotten a full night's sleep in about 2 weeks, though kara's suffering more.

i think the dogs are learning their names. kara's taught them to sit and to lie down. they respond quickly to no. they're being okay about potty training but not fantastic. there have definitely been accidents. we're going to take them for walks with their leashes over the weekend.

kara wishes they would hang out with us on the bed more while we're watching tv and stuff, but they don't. they come up for a few minutes for a scritch and then they jump down. they flop on the floor near the bed or under the dining table and sack out. i'll say this for them: they're good at sacking out. i do like a tired dog.

ashbery on mtv?!

okay. this seems totally weird to me. but i might follow this story and see what they do with it.

(addendum: this is what it is. it's not as off-the-wall as i had imagined. okay then.)

kennedy

kara and i watched the movie bobby over the weekend. it's a fictionalized account of the lives of those in the hotel in which robert kennedy was assassinated on the day he was assassinated. i'd read some mixed stuff about the movie but was quite surprised by it, in a mostly positive way. i think it is a well-made film. it achieves what i think its main goal was, which was to raise the big "what if" question. no one in politics now talks the way this guy did. no one is saying the things he said. maybe people are afraid to say such things, because of what happened to him? or has the bar just dropped phenomenally since 1968? i came away from this movie nostalgic for an america from before i was born and more frustrated than ever about where we are now.

hyundai scare

kara and i took the puppies to see the vet today. they got some shots and were generally admired by the staff. we used the hyundai to get there because it's older and already kinda smells like animals. the mazda is still almost pristine. the grocery store is just across the street from the vet, so kara stayed outside with the dogs while i did a bit of shopping. when i came back out, the car wouldn't start. it just made a crazy awful grinding sort of noise and wasn't even thinking of turning over. it wasn't the battery, because the radio and the a/c came on, and the windows rolled up and down. something with the starter? i don't know anything about cars. but there was a friendly man in the parking lot and he actually gave me a ride to our house so i could get our other car. so thank you, stranger. (again, kara stayed behind with the dogs.) he and his family were about to head out for a weekend of camping. i hope they have a good time. anyway. i got into the house, grabbed the key to the mazda, and drove back to the store. we got ourselves, the dogs, and the groceries back to the house using the mazda, and kara made grilled cheese sandwiches. yummy. then she got the jumper cables from the truck (which she noticed also needs a jump) and we returned to the grocery store. just connecting the batteries of the two cars with the cables allowed the hyundai to start right away; kara didn't even have to power up the mazda. so i guess things are all right. for now. all the cars are here. but i suppose i should get the hyundai looked at, shouldn't i?

eliot scare

approximately 28 hours ago, eliot was chillin' under our back porch. he seems to like it there. kara came home for lunch to let the puppies out of their crate and do their business. steve, as she is wont to do, wandered under the porch. (she likes it there too.) she apparently startled eliot and he apparently swatted at her. he dashed away somewhere and she emerged from beneath the porch, perhaps a little befuddled but not really hurt. the thing was, eliot was apparently quite frightened by steve indeed and he dove deeper into our neighborhood than he had been before. this is, of course, speculation, but the point is that he did not come home for hours. kara returned from work again in the afternoon and then i returned from work. no eliot. kara was worried. probably compartmentalizing (as i am wont to do), i figured he would come home when he was ready, but then i wasn't sure. then kara heard him meowing and found him in our neighbor's back yard, on the other side of the fence. we couldn't reach him and he couldn't jump over. he was obviously one terrified and confused cat. kara went around and met the neighbor, who quickly came to the back yard in a well-meant attempt to retrieve eliot, but she only frightened him off again. of course i should have just hopped the fence and grabbed him, but i was concerned about violating our neighbors' space, especially as we hadn't even met. eliot was gone again. kara searched the neighborhood and i searched the neighborhood. (kara all the time was thinking of her cat wingo, a heck of a good cat, who as she aged became an indoor cat. when i entered the picture, i brought yellow with me, and he was a bit rough with wingo; perhaps because of her fear of him wingo went outside one night and was killed by some other animal [probably not yellow]. kara last evening was very stressed and worried about losing yet another pet.) between the general area where kara thought eliot might be and our house there were several dogs in the yards, and we knew eliot would be frightened of them too and not try to return on his own. finally she spotted him under a house halfway down the block, but he wouldn't come out for her. he was still freaked out. i went and saw him, but he wouldn't come out for me either, until i brought a can of his food with me. i put some in a bowl and he finally came out. while he was eating i grabbed him and he struggled. he struggled, still terrified, while i carried him home. he can be slippery, but i held onto him. he fought me so much, he'd been resistant to our calls, and he'd been gone for so long that i actually thought he didn't want to live with us and be our cat any more. but he's still our cat, and things turned out well. all the animals are okay. still, it was scary for a bit there. we're going to keep the cats indoors for a while, until they get more used to the dogs. i hope that doesn't take very long.

middle name mcqueen?

we might have a problem. the dogs might have learned to open the door of the crate. they were quite quiet last night when kara put them in there. i brought yellow downstairs and he and eliot stayed with us on the bed, so that was a good thing. they'd been keeping themselves upstairs even at night, and i've missed them. it wasn't until maybe 12 or 1 am or so, when i got up to use the bathroom, that the dogs started whining. after a while of that, kara went in there and sat with them, not letting them out, just sitting near the crate, until they quieted again. then, at about a quarter to 5, steve casually approached our bed. then dagmar was by the bed too. the cats took off. it's unclear at this time how those dogs escaped. at the moment kara's taking extra measures, installing secondary blockades, to try to keep them in a confined space during the day while we're at work. interesting.

7 weeks 1 day

who doesn't want to see puppy pictures?

pretty much all we did yesterday was hang around with the puppies. we took them to a pet store because kara thought they needed more toys. we drove over there and plopped them in a shopping cart. dagmar was a tremendous hit at the store; he got all the attention. steve curled up in the bottom of the cart and was largely ignored, which i didn't think was quite fair. sure, she's not striking red like her brother, but she's still quite a cute puppy! it's true, though, that dagmar was standing up in the cart and looking around at everyone, actively seeking the attention and affection those in the pet store could bestow. it was a good experience for them, i think; a bit of socialization.

today i work, here at home, and kara's spending time with the puppies. tomorrow we both leave the house to work, and we haven't quite decided how we'll arrange things for the little guys while we're gone. they did even better in the crate last night than the night before, so maybe we'll just crate them. kara's thinking of coming home for lunch to give them some relief. that might be what will happen.

the little guys aren't big enough to climb the stairs yet, so yellow and eliot have refuge up here. i don't like the idea that the cats feel trapped upstairs, though. i look forward to the time when we can all get along. the day will come.

now we are 6

so! we did get 2 puppies last evening. we drove to oakville to get them and they are here. they are steve and dagmar, dagmar and steve. they were born on june 30, which i want to say makes them 7 weeks old today.

dagmar is a boy, the red one, and steve is the black and white bitch. (we're not all hung up on societal norms regarding gender.) dagmar is already quite adventuresome, climbing over everything and he's a bit of a chewer. steve is more reluctant but she's also quite sweet.

they don't seem terribly interested in the cats. i was worried there would be unpleasant confrontations. there have been a couple of staring matches but so far that's it. yellow hissed and dagmar backed off. i think they'll get used to each other in not too long. they're smaller than the cats, which i wasn't expecting but which is probably a good thing.

kara was up a few times with them during the night, letting them outside when they whined. (they stayed in the crate [sagan's old crate, which is huge for them] because we were worried they couldn't jump off our bed without injuring their little selves.) they play with each other nicely and wear themselves out quickly.

they are rather adorable. they're very small.

addendum

i think it's only fair to say that kara's more torn about this new-puppy situation than i had realized when i posted yesterday morning. this is an emotional thing here. this has already been the longest stretch in her life, she tells me, that she's been without dogs, and there's almost always been some sort of an overlap. she would have an old dog getting tired, so she would obtain a puppy in an effort to revitalize the old one (which was max's role [to enliven her then-older dog (named ranger)] when she got him in 1991 and sagan's role [for max's benefit] when we got her in 2001, though that latter didn't really work out for max). when her older dog went, she would continue with the newer one, without a gap, with shared memories and all of that. but right now we've no dogs at all, having put sagan and max to death within 2 months of each other, and in some respects it does seem a little disrespectful to get new ones already. no one's denying this. this is not something we're having an easy time with here at all. there is tremendous guilt, especially regarding the sagan situation; we might well have done more for her somehow.

however, these new puppies have presented themselves, and kara dearly misses having dogs in the house, so, again, more likely than not we'll have additions to our family this weekend. just so it's known that although the idea of new puppies is exciting, there are complicated feelings here.

expecting/engaged

look! a litter of australian shepherd puppies! kara saw them advertised on our workplace's intranet classifieds yesterday and made a call. they're in the olympia area, maybe an hour or so south of here. we're going down there friday afternoon to look at them. once kara sees them and gets to play with them a little, it would surprise me very much if we didn't bring one or two home.

i'm happy but nervous. i feel perhaps as i would feel if we were pregnant, with some of the worries that would go along with such an event. i want the dogs to be healthy, smart, not too hard to train. and i very much want them to get along with yellow and eliot. those poor cats don't know what they're in for. and neither do i, really. i've never had puppy. sagan was 6 or even 8 months old when we got her, maybe older.

i also feel a little like a recent widower might feel, getting engaged again right away. (if that doesn't sound too bizarre.) this friday, when we check out these pups, will mark only 2 weeks since max's death. is it too soon to start again? kara doesn't think so. yesterday when i got home from work she was all giddy and excited. truly, she looked like she was about to pop. at the same time, she's nervous too, for the same reasons i am. she was also visibly thrilled.

these dogs are of the same breed as max, only purer. max had other things mixed in. so they're of a smart breed, which is a good thing. and max was of course the best dog in the world. kara promises to work with these new guys, train them, and make good pets of them. i admit i'm excited at the prospect too, as i've come to enjoy dogs, but the idea is still a bit nerve-wracking.

3 discrete thoughts

1.
yesterday i started training for a new, but likely temporary, facet of my job. during august 2 or 3 days a week i'm to go to the office and do some low-end quality assurance work. if a transcriptionist leaves multiple blanks in a report or otherwise deems the report unfit for inclusion in a patient's electronic medical record, i look at and listen to the report and fill in the blanks (if i can) or otherwise make it fit. one of the transcriptionists who usually does this is taking a chunk of august off, and i'm filling in. for me it's a welcome change of pace. (and provoking of the memory that it was 1 year 2 days ago that i left the office to work at home.)

2.
i miss max. for a few days immediately following his death i felt bad about the continuing passage of time, about our lives going on without him, about leaving him behind. i wanted time to stop at least for a while so i could think about him, remember him, be with him, keep him close, without worrying about other aspects of my life going forward. (perhaps in this regard i'm the opposite of kara?) i still do feel bad about that, our going on and his not, but i suppose things are getting better. it's already been nearly a week, and that in and of itself hurts.

3.
meanwhile, i've been reading fun home by alison bechdel and it's terrific. it's a graphic memoir about her own coming out and about her father's homosexuality (the latter giving her a connection to kara's complicated upbringing). of course i've long been a fan of ms bechdel's strip. i highly recommend this book as well as others by her.

& then there were 4

max died yesterday afternoon. it was last weekend that kara made the decision that it was time, and, when the vet called us monday, she scheduled an appointment. so it's been a tough week for us, living with max in what we knew to be his final days.

the vet and a tech came to our house yesterday at a little after 2. it was good of them to come here, because max got so frightened at the clinic and we wanted this to go as easily for him as possible. i don't think he was afraid. he got his sedative intramuscularly and the poison intravenously and he was gone before 3. his head was in kara's lap.

so we've lost 2 dogs in as many months. and of course we lost rumble last december. kara tore the ramp off the back porch and we're washing the blankets from max's bedding. it's very quiet around here without him.

we love you, old man. we are so very sorry. we'll miss you.