Justin Buist

The wife and I took off after dinner tonight to meet up with some friends for a pint. Before we left we let our oldest cat out. We never wanted an indoor/outdoor cat, she just insisted on it, and she’d never gotten hurt while outside, so we became OK with it.

Coming home tonight we see a black and white cat flat out dead in the middle of the road in front of our house. “That’s not my cat, that’s not my cat!” is the first thing the wife says upon seeing it. We park the car, I get a flashlight from the house, and head back into the road. Black on top, white on bottom. Sorta looks like our cat. Hard to tell with the head not being properly shaped. No heart beat. Is that brain in the ear I see? It’s warm. I’m not a doctor or anything but I’m quite certain she’s dead.

I pick her up, flashlight on her, trying to figure out if this is our cat or not. It’s not that I don’t know our cats, it’s just that I’ve never seen one under an LED flashlight in the dark. It’s not how we interact. Plus the cat in question abhors human contact. While walking back to the house I hear the wife shriek a bit. “Oh God, this must be Bogey” I’m thinking. She KNOWS her cat is dead now and isn’t liking it.

I get closer and the wife didn’t shriek because I picked up the cat. It’s because Bogey came running up to her and did her little “me-me-me?!” chirp.

Our cat was fine. The one in my hand wasn’t. I asked for a 2nd opinion on the “dead” thing and the wife confirmed it. It was pretty obvious but I wanted to make sure.

The wife held the light as I dug the hole out near our shed. As we thought about it we realized this is the 3rd cat we’ve seen on our road that was of the same coloring in the last 2 months. Probably barn cats, not exactly pets but not really feral either. I took a bit of comfort in knowing that it was highly unlikely that a child wouldn’t be missing the critter come morning.

Still, it was pretty sad.

I can’t believe I’m saying this.

We took Chuck Norris to a doggie day care place today. Wait, I should back up.

We’ve got a trip coming up and need somewhere to put the dog for that time. Usually we had my youngest brother just stay at our house while we’re gone but he’s got his own place now. So, we’ll send him to a kennel. Sucks, but ya gotta do it, right?

Well, before you can board at dog at the place we picked you have to let the dog stay there for 3 hours as an interview during the day. We get there and everybody on the staff is a dog person. Duh, right? They took to him pretty well, and nobody was the least bit worried about him being a larger critter at 80lbs and one that looks like an evil demon pit bull to boot. So, that was nice. There wasn’t any crazy temperament testing of any kind. Just a quick meet and greet and they tossed him with a bunch of other dogs about his size and watched him for a bit. We got a quick thumbs up a tour of the place where I was blown away.

They probably had 60 dogs back there. Four different groups, and Chuck’s group probably had 20 dogs in it. Each group’s play area is probably 40′ wide and 80′ long, with half it outdoors and half of it indoors. There’s some objects for them to run up an down on too. Chuck liked it. How do I know that? Because he’s scaled 6′ chain link fences to be by us when we’re on the other side of it. Today? He saw us, ran up, barked twice to let us know he’s there, then ran back outside to play with the other dogs.

Three hours later the wife picked up one tired dog! Then it gets interesting.

While getting the certificate that says he’s approved for staying there they mentioned that he played an awful lot with one particular dog, which they happen to be fostering right now and it’s up for adoption. Wife called me from there and told me the story. My first question was, “Are they telling everybody that comes in today that they’ve got this dog up for adoption?” Nope. The woman in front of my wife came in, picked up her dog, and they didn’t say anything about it to her. So, I stopped by after work to meet this dog. Friendly, female mutt, about 40lbs, full of energy, very much an attention whore… pretty much a smaller female version of Chuck. Looks like she’s some kind of pointer and coon hound mix.

So, it looks like we’ve found our 2nd dog! We’re going to do a weekend trial soon and see if she works out in the home.

Back to the doggie care care thing. I never thought I’d actually use such a facility but, seriously, in the winter time it’d be a great way to get him some exercise. Walking him in the winter is problematic because his webbed feet pick up snow and ice and he starts limping. Plus he has a light coat and doesn’t like being outside in the cold. For $15-$20 a day we can drop him off, and it’s pretty much on the wife’s way to work, and he’ll come back well exercised. I like the idea now.

Oh, and now I’m dreaming of opening my own doggie day care / kenneling place because it sounds like so much fun.

Sometimes when you put Chuck Norris on a leash he’s a little hard to maintain until he gets a bit tired.

I took him out to get the mail this evening, because sometimes he jumps up on the door when I’m out and flips the deadbolt. Seriously. Anyway, he’s doing his usual running around not paying much attention to me until I yank the mail from the mailbox. Then he sits down.

I filter through the mail, grab some junk, and shove it toward him. In his mouth it goes. He sits up and makes a nice slow walk directly back into the house.

Strangest thing. We never trained him to do this.

So, one of our cats has taken to urinating in a certain corner of our basement lately. Yes, I know, it’s disgusting. We’ve started the cleaning process to get the funk out.

To keep her from going back to the corner we bought an ssscat device. It’s a stupid name, but it works. It’s an air canister with a motion censor on it. If something comes within a meter of the sensor it spits out a stream of air. Freaks he hell out of the cat. It works.

Oh, and yes, we had her tested for a urinary tract infection. She’s fine, it’s just a behavior thing with her.

At 11:16am EDT Chuck was handed the “Guaranteed Indestructible Dog Toy”.

If your dog breaks it just mail it back for a replacement they say. This should be fun.