Like most dogs, Ernie smells like a dog. It’s been awhile since he’s had a bath so he currently REALLY smells like a dog. Every time I kiss his head, my lower brain stem reaction is “he smells just like Dad’s old house”.

One of the nicknames for my Dad’s old house was Rundown Acres. It was an old farm house with uneven floors, ratty carpet, resident wasps in of all the upstairs rooms and some of the biggest spiders I have ever seen.

He always had a variety of dogs and cats in and out of the house. There was a “housekeeper” he called Bird Legs, a very nice lady that came over every couple of weeks to do the laundry only, but other than I don’t remember ever seeing any cleaning take place. One summer the place was infested with fleas. My mom was completely mortified when Beerly Sr. dropped me off after a several week visit covered head to toe in flea bites.

There are also many fond Home Zoo childhood memories of Rundown Acres. There was the time that all the cats gave birth around the same time so there were at least 20 kittens, my favorite childhood dog Duchess, and a slew of other great cats and dogs… one stinky sniff of Ernie brings it all right back. As a kid I knew Rundown was stinky, but I didn’t really know why. It’s always satisfying when a childhood mystery is solved.

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The Beholder, hard at work

Mommie is the master of what we call beholding. For example, she’ll get really close to Gallagher when she’s eating and watch her, or if Gallagher is playing or even just minding her business, Mommie will watch her the way a bully watches its next victim in the school yard. This is one of the reasons we call Mommie The Executive, she knows how to psych-out her competition.

Another one of Mommie’s favorite techniques, is to pick a spot that Gallagher has claimed and make it her own. In the loft Gallagher used to have club house in the top of a closet in The Lady’s office and the beauty of it was that she was the only cat who get up there. There aren’t too many places like that for Gallagher in the current apartment so she’s always looking to find a new spot.

Last winter I had a vest that I laid down in my work area (mistake) and it took Gallagher all of 5 minutes to turn it into “The Cat Nest”. I never wore the vest again, but was happy to see Gallagher have a spot of her own. We knew what was coming, the first thing The Lady said when she noticed Gallagher was “How long do you think it’s gonna take?”.

Without fail, a week or so later I noticed that The Cat Nest was in use. Looking down I expected to see Gallagher, but it was an innocent looking Mommie. Like any good bad girl, she quickly flashed me the flirty eyes… she knew what she did. She never does it right away, she always lets Gallagher get comfortable and then she sneaks right in there.

We recently bought a soft carrying case for Ernie (that hasn’t quite worked out yet) and since we couldn’t decide where to store it, it’s been sitting open near Ernie’s “bed” (pile of towels) in hopes that he might go in and make it a den. No such luck with Ernie, however Gallagher moved right in. Gallagher has been in there for about 2 weeks and in keeping with her regular timing, Mommie made her move this morning and is now sitting comfortably in the fleece lined case, looking completely innocent and batting the lovey eyes.

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Back when we lived in the loft, Gallagher always used to rush the door and run about half way up the stairs and then turn around and look back at us. She’s always been a drama queen, wanting to be chased, needing her alone time and hiding places… the usual. This ritual usually meant I would follow her, she would go up one more flight and then she would “let me catch her”. This happened almost nightly (and was actually occasionally fun if I was stoned).

One night she had apparently gotten out in to hallway unnoticed. It was kind of late, maybe around midnight, and the phone rings. Phone ringing in general makes The Lady nervous, but late night phone ringing is outer limits.

We’re screeners so I let the machine get it. It’s our nice upstairs neighbor muttering something about one of our cats getting out. Always good in a crisis, The Lady reacts: “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god… which one, which one, which one?”. I pick up the phone and find out she’s just in the hallway. The Lady then trims her mantra to just “Which one?” so I ask the nice neighbor (like he knows the names of our, at the time, 8 cats). “Uuuuhhhhh, the pretty one?”

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We’re going to have a weekend guest at the Home Zoo, one large barky Larry Fleisher! He’s very sweet and he and Ernie seem to get along but Larry is usually very focused on Julian, his human companion.

Coincidentally Larry will be guesting at the HZ the same weekend as the Halloween Parade. The Lady will be dressing up Ernie up as a unicorn… looks like we’ll be taking two unicorns to the parade.

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Ernie recently acquired a new nickname, Cricket. He’s gotten more than a little whiny lately and a lot of the time his repetitive whining almost sounds like crickets. We’re starting to address it, mainly by The Lady not taking him out every time he whines, but there is an extra wrinkle. He also has been shaking a bit.

We think he had a horrible diet in his previous home and while he’s been on Wysong cat/dog food brown rice for about 2 months, his stool still isn’t where it should be, so we suspect our little Cricket has some gastrointestinal issues, which could be playing into the whining. His stomach is also pretty gurrgly… poor thing.

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In an uncharacteristic move, The Captain took a dump on the floor this morning. The litterbox was 2 days “overdue” and occasionally under the same circumstances when there has been a rogue turd on the floor it’s been close to the box.

He actually looked at me while he was doing it and did it right in the middle of the living room… right in the foot path! I was kind of proud!! No messing around with an ambivalent turd near the box when no one is looking, “Change the damn litter!”.

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Mr. Littlehead, Mommie, Gallagher and Ernie have nothing to report at this time, except that they are probably hungry and Ernie would probably like to be on a walk if he is not already on a walk.

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