dog bed – Page 4

Beat the Heat (and Smoke)

An unusually hot and dry summer in the Pacific Northwest has led to many troublesome wildfires, and the winds shifted this weekend bringing smoke from fires far to the east into Portland. We kept the windows closed to minimize the smoke coming into the house, and spent the entire weekend in our bedroom with the portable air conditioner keeping things nice and cool.

I took a quick picture of Ellie in her dog bed and Boo behind her in the cat bed, Sam was with my wife on the bed and Trixie I think was playing elsewhere in the house. We keep the bedroom door mostly closed to keep the cool air in, but open enough that the cats can come and go as they please. When Ellie walks in she swings the door wide open with a dramatic swoop of her head. It makes me laugh every time, our sweet-natured goofball making such a grand entrance.

Black & Gray

I love Ellie’s gray eyebrows, they add so much expression to her face. I sometimes wonder if the price she pays for being such an amazing dog is that she gets a gray hair for each moment of joy she brings into our lives.

Allow Me to Introduce Yourself

My wife left town on Wednesday and I was to take over spending the night with Trixie, plus getting up early to feed the pets, and walking Ellie in the morning as well as the evening. Already exhausted, it just seemed a little too much to manage to make it to work on time and get a reasonable amount of sleep, but thankfully Thursday and Friday were fairly open in my schedule so I took them off. Combined with a holiday on Monday I’m home for five straight days.

I’m thankful for that, as the introductions have begun.

My first task was to figure out sleeping arrangements for Wednesday night. Ellie usually sleeps in our bedroom on the dog bed or our bed, and since she had already met Trixie without eating her, I brought her dog bed into the guest bedroom and Ellie, Trixie, and I spent the night there. It all went well at first, I don’t know if she’ll grow out of it but Trixie is a snuggler when she sleeps, sometimes even curling up under your chin. Ellie took to her dog bed and we all drifted off to sleep.

At about 3:30 a.m. I woke to a tiny, snuggly orc chewing on my face and poking me with her claws. I petted her and explained in my best orc tongue that this was not the time for playing. She finally calmed down and we fell asleep until 5 a.m. when a loud and angry goblin began caterwauling outside our door. I assured him that feeding time wasn’t until 6 a.m. and would he please let me get some sleep, but my goblin speech is not as good as my orc, and he persisted.

At 6 a.m. I got up to feed Ellie and Sam and Boo and give Ellie and Trixie their pills and scoop the litter boxes and then snuggled up with Trixie to try and go back to sleep. Unfortunately I was wide awake but I did finally fall back asleep, getting up at 9 a.m. for some breakfast and to take Ellie on our walk.

This all repeated verbatim last night, except that Ellie joined us in the bed, so I’m especially thankful that I was able to be off work. I’ve been letting Trixie explore the house more and more, but she still greets the other cats with too much enthusiasm so there hasn’t been much progress there. She did eventually get pretty tired, it’s a stressful business exploring a new home, so I put her at the top of the cat tree and she settled in for a nap while Boo and Sam came up to watch the squirrels at the suet feeder. Trixie was tired enough that she just lay there and let the other cats sit inches away from her, so while it’s a very small start, it’s still a start.

After a while she was overwhelmed and came back to the guest room on her own, so I grabbed my laptop and came up with her, she’s asleep on my legs at the moment. She’s also taken to napping in the dog bed that I brought in from the bedroom, as you can see in the picture above.

Sorry Ellie.

Floppy Ears

A picture from 2013 of Ellie on the dog bed in my office. We had adopted our youngest cat Boo a week earlier but he was still being kept in isolation, so she didn’t have to worry about him stealing her bed quite yet, although Emma did occupy it at times. I couldn’t resist a picture when she raised one of her delightfully floppy ears.

CAT133 “Tandem Dog Bed Stealing”

If you’ve mastered the art of solo dog bed stealing, why not double your fun? In this class Professor Boo will teach you how to snuggle, spoon, and stick your feet in your best friend’s face!

The Good Life

Ellie takes full advantage of her surprisingly cat-free dog bed.

CAT132 “Advanced Dog Bed Stealing”

Do you steal your dog’s bed, only to find the dog has enough room to snuggle up and impinge on your personal freedoms? Then this class is for you! Professor Boo will show you how one little cat can take up an entire dog bed, leaving plenty of room for you to roll around, or if you’d prefer, get nice and comfortable.

CAT131 “Basic Dog Bed Stealing” is a required prerequisite for this class. Professor Boo takes no responsibility if your dog is a meanie and eats you.

Boo, Stealer of Beds

Our master dog bed stealer on Christmas Eve. My wife made this bed years ago out of pillows when we first got our dog Ellie. It is also a favorite of our cat Sam who likes the crevices the pillows create.

Our Black (and Increasingly Gray) Lab

Our sweet Ellie, taken on the day my Canon EOS M arrived.

The Bed Thief

While Sam would occasionally sleep in one of Ellie’s beds, particularly the homemade one, the thieving of dog beds began in earnest in late July. Coincidentally, this is also when Boo was given free reign of the house. This is Boo on his first day out after a couple of weeks in isolation in my wife’s office in the basement. That week began his gradual introduction into the house at large, we’d let him out for a while but at night or when we were away we still kept him isolated.

Boo was shy and nervous when we adopted him and you could see on his face how exploring the house and meeting the pets was both exciting and exhausting for him, so we paced his introduction even slower than normal. Several times on this first day he’d go up and explore the ground level and meet the other pets and then come back down to Ellie’s dog bed for a little rest. The bed was right outside my wife’s office so he could enjoy a taste of his newfound freedom and yet easily scoot back in to his comfort zone if needed.

He showed little fear of Ellie from the start, and for her part, she was nonplussed by the arrival of the little fellow. So when he stole her bed, she laid down beside it on the hard floor, making life a little easier for the kitten as he began to understand what it meant to be home.