Silly Beasts!

Are you an animal lover? I consider myself to be one, especially since I have three furry "children" here who reside with me.

There's Sammy -the purebred mutt with roots that are more than a bit eclectic. Best description I can think of for him is to say he does look sort of (well, actually very much so) like a minature Benji dog. He's been with me now for five years and he was a little over a year old when we got him. He's basically a very sweet, very mellow little fellow except when a certain neighbor of mine who lives about five houses up the street from me decides to walk his dog and Sam truly hates that dog. As a matter of fact, that is the only dog I have ever seen him react to in a negative way and boy, does he ever. I swear that as soon as that neighbor and his dog leave their house to go for a walk, Sam senses that because he will start by growling a bit and then, the growl gradually changes over to a few barks but by the time this duo gets within view of my living room window, Sam is up in the window sill, barking like a lunatic and his voice changes too in that his bark becomes very ferocious sounding.

I also have two cats now too. Well, actually I have Pearl, who is a little over three years old now, white with orange markings, very, very fluffy and also, a tub of lard to try to pick up now too! She's quite the lazy cat preferring to spend her days reclining -either in the front entry way, where she reposes in the sunlight and pretends to watch people and occasionally animals that go by the house. Or, she also has an affection for resting in the windowsill of the Bay window in the living room too and does pretty much the same thing there as she does out in the front door entryway.

Then there is the other cat that I just acquired about two months ago now. She's actually still a kitten -only about 14 to 16 weeks old now. She's the exact opposite of Pearl in that Fica (yes, that is her name) is solid black, very slight build, shorthaired and anything but the epitome of laziness! She wants very much to play with either Pearl or Sam but neither of them appear interested in the slightest to honoring her spells of trying to badger them into some kind of kitten and cat or kitten and dog games.

It's that aspect between the two felines that I find really humorous though.

If you have a cat or several, you know cats are always searching for some off-the-wall place to get into and lay claim to and one of their favorite things would be boxes. No special kind of boxes are required, and they don't even have to be empty although they do like empty ones quite a bit.

And my house is often a gold mine with empty boxes since I sell Avon products and every two weeks, I always seem to end up then with at least one "new" empty box here. At the rate I've been acquiring these boxes, I'm soon going to be over run with them, I think.

But anyway, that was just a little digression there about how many boxes exist here.

Right now, there are two empty boxes at the entrance to my dining room and they are sitting under a card table, back-to-back. Pearl and Fica have each laid claim to one of these boxes for their special sleeping space at this time and what I find comical is to watch them as they each hop into their respective choice of box and then, move around in it for a little bit to apparently get a feel for the place and it is when they are each doing that moving around, that Fica often gets a little rambunctious, bumping around more than Pearl approves of, and before you know it, Pearl is standing up in her box, leaning on the edge of the top, with her big fat furry paw swatting down at Fica and with each pass of that paw, she lets out a hiss to give a little more warning to Fica. This then gets Fica moving around more in her box so that her movements bump her box into Pearl's which then causes Pearl to launch out another attack.

But that's as far as their feud goes there. They never really get into any knock down, drag it out kind of cat fights. Just petty nonsense as far as I can see going on there.

If they get a little too noisy or push their boxes too much, Sam might get up from where ever he's bee sleeping and meander over to watch the two silly cats for a few seconds and then, it's like his expression is one in which he's thinking "Kids! What the heck you gonna do with 'em."

I was really surprised when I saw how Sam and Pearl do tend to deal with little Fica and have done ever since I brought her home. When Pearl was a kitten, she and Sam made up immediately as friends and playmates and they would rip and tear around the house, chasing each other around, rolling on the floor together, running through the living room as fast as they could go, up onto the couch, along the back of the couch and then, chasing each other over to the next piece of furniture along their race track.

But from the very first sighting by either Sam or Pearl of this kitten, neither of them has befriended her in any way shape or form. No playing games with her with the minor exception being that with the boxes.

Wonder why this is, especially since Sam is very cat friendly and Pearl used to play a lot with Mandy's cat that lived here until they moved down to Middletown last year.

If I didn't know better,(and well truthfully, I don't because I am neither a dog or a cat whisperer, ya know) I'd say Sam and Pearl are discriminating against the little one, poor little Fica, and just plain ignoring her!