Raining cats and dogs

I am not a dog person. My family never owned a dog when I was a kid, so I've never gotten the hang of it. I'm used to standoffish cats, who are really showing they love and trust you when they come over and sit on your lap. I'm slightly contemptuous about the fact that dogs will basically slobber affection on just about anyone who has a dog biscuit.

Greg loves cats, but he has very fond memories of a black lab his family had when he was a kid, as well as other earlier dogs. I don't know if we'll ever get a dog, but if we do it'll definitely be Greg's dog.

In the meantime, we have our two new kitties, who returned to us today after a night away at the vet. Yesterday was their mutilation (declawing). They seem to be doing very well, but they're on drugs, so what can you expect. The vet gave us enough pain medication to last three days or so, if we stick to the recommended dosage. This is also assuming that Greg doesn't decide to try some of it. You think I'm kidding, but Greg has eaten various kinds of pet food, so I wouldn't be at all surprised.

A few years ago, the next door neighbors that we really liked moved away to the country and we got new neighbors. These neighbors have two medium size dogs who are outside in the backyard quite frequently since the neighbors don't ever walk them. They have an invisible fence, so the dogs never trespass into our yard, which is good since they probably have quite a bit of poop saved up for those visits to their backyard.

The new neighbors moved in during winter, so we didn't really get to know them or their dogs until several months later (we do live in Wisconsin, you know). I still remember that first warm spring night when we were able to sleep with the windows open to the night air. Greg and I were sound asleep at maybe 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. on that Saturday morning when we were very rudely awakened from sound sleep by loud barking that sounded like it was in our bedroom.

Makes ya jump, you know. Yes, it turns out that the dogs were taking their morning constitutionals around their backyard and our bedroom is closest to that yard. The dogs look across our yard to the busy street beyond and whenever someone walks by with their dog, which happens every, oh, six minutes or so, the neighbor dogs bark. Loudly. Early in the morning until late at night.

In fact, they barked just a moment ago, which prompted me to include them in this post. I like to sleep. Some morning, when Greg isn't around to stop me, I might just take his gopher-killing BB rifle and have myself a little hunt out the window of our bedroom on those noisy critters. I'll bet if I only pumped the gun two or four times, the BB wouldn't even break the dogs' skin. Just scare the crap out of them and make them think twice before they barked again. Hmmmm.