Mere Minutes: A Case of Licking

Cleo licks. A lot.

She licks when she's nervous. When she's happy. When she knows she's done something wrong. Even when she's sleeping. Her big, rough, pink tongue slobbers about uncontrollably and incessantly.

There's only one way to stop the licking. You have to scratch her stomach. Then she looks at you as if she owns you, as if you're her pet.

When we had our old carpet, we used a product called Carpet Fresh. It's meant to make ratty old carpet fragrant for about a day, leading the cleaner to think it's clean. Because of the smell. Yeah, I know it doesn't make any sense.

What does that have to do with the licking? Well, it seems that powder somehow got into Cleo's paws. So, she started licking her paws. And licking. And licking. Until she licked the pads right off her back paws. We took her to the vet who gave us a solution in which to soak the paws. And antibiotics. We followed the instructions. She kept licking.

It got so bad, in fact, that we had to put a cone around her head. And she tried to lick those paws. God knows she did. But she couldn't, making her utterly miserable. Instead she licked the dust and pollen from the air repeatedly until she made this house habitable for the worst asthmatic.

We talked to someone who told us that the Carpet Fresh might be the problem. And, after we got our new carpet, just like that, she stopped licking her paws and made due with the carpet, the couch, blankets, Buddy, the cats, Joseph, water, play toys, and cat urine.

Yuck.

But that's not the story, this is. Today I come home after what can only be described as a grueling day. I take out the trash - Friday's our trash day - and do the last of my work. I then put the old blue blanket - an artifact from the old man's house - on the ground in my room and proceed to do my workout.

Now, it's tough to get the workout started because the doggies want some love. So, they attack my head as I do push ups. Buddy just charges head first and hits me squarely in the middle of my skull. This is how he shows his love. Meanwhile, Cleo starts a lickin'. I turn my face one way, she licks the back of my neck for a little while and then searches for my face again. She must lick my face. There's just no way around it. All while I'm doing push ups. You try that...

After a while, she gets tired of trying to find my face and retires to the bed where she stares at me with a knowing grin. Because she knows that soon enough I'll be doing an exercise where I lie on my back and lift my knees to my chest. At the moment she sees her opening, leaps off the bed, leading with her tongue, and assaults my eyes, ears, nose, and cheeks. Over and over, her wet tongue finds every nook and crevice on and in my face while I try to do my exercise.

Finally, I scratch her tummy. And she stares at me laughingly. Knowing that she has once again ruled the day.

Another Evening to Forget

Seventeen days ago, I told you about the joy of returning home to find our carpet decimated and Buddy attempting to digest the tiny pieces that Cleo had so successfully dislodged.

Since then, we have had new carpet installed. All should be well. It has been, in fact, until tonight...

But wait. Before I can tell you about tonight, let me tell you about my day at work.

Arrive. Get tea. Earl Grey. Work on an e-mail I should have sent yesterday. I craft e-mails; they need to be precise. Or else I spend twice as much time trying to follow up. Anyway, I have a meeting in which we discuss onboarding. A new type of torture implemented by my company. We're in the Darth Vader building after all. That's an hour. Painful. Next a status meeting. A project that's ready to deploy. Today, in fact. We were to deploy at 3:30. Fine, fine.

Pause

Continuing to craft the e-mail. And other stuff. E-mails fly at my inbox like rabid pigeons. I answer each volley. But like a hydra, the e-mails spawn more. This constant admin gives way to a strategy meeting. Cringing. Stomach in knots. Lunatic perceptions and darksome conclusions. I won't elaborate here. Not yet. It ends, thankfully, and I move to counter yet more e-mails with my vicious backhand.

Coughee with Tara. I vent.

Weekly status meeting with a client in OK City. He likes to talk. On to a status meeting for a project that boggles the mind and soul. Next I venture to the desk of our deployer - not to be confused with our destroyer - and ask how the deployment of the standardization pieces are coming. The standardization pieces had to come before the other projects that needed to be deployed today. The deployer and the developer responsible for the standardization pieces smile gleefully as they work through some 'small' items.

Another status meeting for another project for another client. Then more work for the client we love to hate. I return to the deployer. Not yet deployed. Impeding the progress of the other project deployments, I say. They know, they know. Another status meeting for another project for another client.

I return a third time. Problems. Problems? I ask. Problems. Damn, both sides of my brain exclaim. The standardization pieces are stuck in environmental limbo. And my other projects won't deploy. Great. Project managers don't look good when this kind of thing happens.

But I have to go. Tutor for an hour. Race to the bus. Sit on the bus. Tired. Walk home. Want to sit and eat and then blog and perhaps accomplish a few other things.

Walk in the door. Ah, the fragrance wafting from the dogs' room. The putrid smell emanating from Buddy's crate. Drag the crate outside. Spray the crate. Spray the dog. Cleo needs food. Feed her. Close Buddy in the garage. Bring him inside. Bathe him in the guest bath tub. Dry him off. He vomitousnesses all over the bathroom floor. Appetizing. He goes back into the garage. Towel the floor. Wash the towels. Clean the bathroom. Notice the overpowering smell is giving me a headache. Start lighting candles and opening windows. Not freezing but cold enough to start turning the hands and feet blue. Check on Buddy. Sick in dribblets in the garage. A little bleach'll do 'em good. Bleach 'em. No, not Buddy, the dribblets. Back inside. Have to take the garbage out. Might as well while I'm cleaning. Cleo surveys my progress; she approves. Walk into the garage preparing the trash. Buddy relieves himself just beyond the potty pads I've laid but not quite on my foot. Enjoyable. I recommend it. Open the garage door. Get the hose. Spray the chocolate colored waste out into the grass. Wrestle Buddy back into the garage where he sits obediently thinking that I'm going to spray him again. He shivers. I clean the crate. Cleo whines when I get back in. She thinks she's missing something exciting. I tell her to go away. Put the towels in the dryer. Shave. Yeah, weird, I know. But it was annoying me. Check on Buddy. Nothing bad. Prepare finances for tomorrow when our checks clear. Yes, weird, I know; we've established that. Check on Buddy. Seems okay. Lighter on his feet. Happier, I guess. I let him in.

He's sitting at my feet as I blog. Haven't eaten yet. Stomach's just about calmed down. And here comes Joseph home from his 6-10 Thursday evening class. I think I'll end here. And maybe eat...

An Evening to Forget

It's 10:30 p.m. (Pacific) Do you know where your children are? How about pets? Do you want mine?

We get home after work last Thursday evening, and what do we find? The dogs have gotten bored and started tearing up the carpet. We see the torn carpet, but there are no pieces of carpet. Why is that?

Let's hearken back to a simpler time. We had just adopted Buddy, and we were told that bedding was a good idea for dogs. So, we get two wool blankets. We put them in the dogs' crates and think nothing more of it. Until we return home from work the following day. Cleo's blanket is fine. But Buddy's? His seems to be torn. He must be tearing at it out of boredom, we think. Well, we were close. He was, in fact, tearing at it. To EAT it. Our genius of a dog decided that he was going to try to eat a wool blanket. We brought him to the doctor. The doctor told us that his stomach was certainly bloated. He also told us that dogs can't digest wool. No, REALLY!!? His advice? Just wait till Buddy throws it up. Meanwhile, don't feed him because nothing will get through.

We paid for that advice?

Fast foward to Thursday. Where were the carpet pieces? In Buddy's belly. We're pretty certain that Cleo destroys the carpet, and Buddy, thinking they're treats, swoops in and swallows them whole. So, we had to wait.

Now, things were getting through - so we noticed - when Buddy was using the outdoor necessary. So, we wondered if it possible that he might actually digest little pieces of carpet.

Yeah, no...

We arrived home today to find him and his crate... well, let's just say, a mess. I bring him outside and spray him down while Joseph tries to air out the house. I let him back in the house, and spray his crate down - which I still have to put back together. Joseph continues with what he was doing. I get back inside. Mayhem. Cleo hasn't eaten and Buddy's drinking water - probably dehydrated from his condition. We let them out so we can square things away. They run around. They run back inside. And Buddy proceeds to grace us with the water he just drank out from the same orifice into which it was originally entered.

Into the garage he went since it had begun to pour outside. More cleaning. Towels into the washer. Joseph cooking. Checked on Buddy. Joseph needed to write something up on his laptop. But Microsoft Word has decided that it will close every time he starts to type. Randomly. And every time. Nice. He comes into the back room to type on the PC.

I turned on the TV. Monday Night Football. The Jints having their way with the Brownies? Nope. Getting killed. I watched them for five minutes and can't believe how buffoonish they looked. Eli utterly lost. Coughlin screaming his reddened face off.

I'm tired, suffice it to say. And I have nothing else to give. I think I'll get out of my work clothes now... just after I rebuild Buddy's crate.

How I Met Cleo

I had returned from a month-long stay in Connecticut just in time to celebrate Joseph's birthday and to move into our new house. As we had agreed many moons before, it was time to start looking for a puppy.

We had been through all the questions. Well, all the questions we knew at the time. 'How big?' and 'What type?' We decided that we neither wanted a horse nor a rat. So, Great Danes and Irish Wolfhounds were out. Miniature chihuahuas and Papillons too. No yap yap dogs. Terriers weren't in our future. A good personality. That ruled out Poodles and Dalmatians. Still, we had a lot of breeds from which to choose. So we started looking.

We came up with a list of breeds we wanted. Pug (Joseph), Boxer (David), Husky (David), Cocker Spaniel (Both), Shar-Pei (Joseph), Bulldog - English or French (Joseph), Shiba Inu (David), Beagle (Both). After we made the list, we began looking for pure bred dogs on our list and discovered how much they cost. We proceeded to throw the list into the nearest lake.

It was then that we began looking at Petfinder and Craigslist. But it just didn't seem as easy to find a dog as it had been to find cats three years earlier. Most of the dogs were middle-aged, and we definitely wanted the excitement of a puppy. Well, that was a no-go.

We thus began our trips to animal shelters in the area. We went to the Seattle shelter first, and my heart sunk. I saw countless pitbulls with cropped ears and sad eyes. We wondered if we should just try to save one of those poor puppies. But the workers warned us that most of those pitbulls required significant training, and we weren't quite ready for that kind of load. We moved on.

We went to Kent and found saw a Golden Retriever mix that we took out to play. He was young enough, but also rather listless and disinterested. We weren't impressed. And there weren't many other options.

We went to Bellevue where we saw the cutest young black Cocker Spaniel. We inquired. Already taken.

We went to Paws somewhere up north and surveyed their facility. We saw an older husky mix named Rose. A beautiful dog, she had already given birth to a litter and therefore had dangling udders. We were willing to look past that little feature of hers, but we still couldn't get past the age. Yes, we were puppy agists. We told them that we would like some time to consider. They told us that we had a day. We never called back.

We went back to the Seattle shelter. We went back to Kent. We kept looking at Petfind and Craigslist. No luck.

Then the day came. It was a Sunday in late August when we set out from our house. Our destination? Bellevue. And then we had a few other shelters we were considering. Further away, but new, at least. We traveled down Bangor and took a right on Renton Ave S. We traveled down through Skyway and then past the airport. The road zigged and zagged a few times before we found ourselves on N 3rd Ave. At the intersection of N 3rd and Sunset Blvd in Renton, Joseph and I looked for a sign that pointed to I-405. There was none. I had looked at the directions before I left but didn't print them out. 'I thought you knew where we were going,' he said. 'I did too,' I replied. 'And I thought there would be some kinda signage to tell us where to go.' I turned right. I should have turned left.

As we slowly discovered that we were going the wrong way, we argued a bit before deciding that we'd just go to Kent and then double back to Bellevue. We wouldn't need to double back.

We arrived to a very animated shelter in Kent. The front lobby seemed to be teeming with people. We whisked past the people to the door that led to the dog runs. And in the first cage to the left was a litter of honey-colored puppies that couldn't have been more than a few weeks old. They were climbing all over each other and pulling at their makeshift multi-colored collars. I walked down further to find yet another group of puppies, darker in hue and equally adorable. But Joseph hadn't budged from the first cage. And so I made my way back. Joseph was putting his finger into the cage to the delight of the orange and red-collared puppies.

Joseph popped up, excited as he could be, and made his way to a volunteer. 'Can I see the one with the red collar?' 'Sure, just a sec,' she said as she finished with someone else. A few moments later, she came over and asked which one. 'The red collar,' Joseph said.

'I was looking at that one,' another woman declared from behind us. She had the kind of demeanor that might make you want to hit her car with a bat just because she was there. But this was too happy a day. And we weren't in the mood to argue. 'Can I see the orange one then?' asked Joseph. No one seemed to have secretly claimed that one, so Joseph and I took the little she-puppy into a 'visiting room'. Once in there, Joseph held her to his chest. And she, with her tiny claws started inching up towards his neck while whimpering ever so slightly. Yep, there was no doubt. She was ours.

We left that day without her because she needed to be neutered, but Joseph left early from work on the following day to retrieve our little girl.

The name? And no it's not Chloe. Nor is she named after Cleopatra. And, good God, no, she isn't named after Miss Cleo. In fact, her name comes from a disagreement that Joseph and I had after our visit with her on that Sunday. We were deciding when her birthday had been, the day she had actually been born. And if it were four weeks prior to the end of August, then it would have had to have been the end of July, which is Leo. But no, Joseph thought she was older and was actually a Cancer. So, we decided to combine the names.

And that's how I met (and how we named) Cleo.