The Audacity

Sumo had the audacity to regurgitate undigested kibble IN, not on MY bed! On my freshly laundered white cotton sheets, at exactly 2 am this morning, without giving me the slightest of warning.

Loverboy Valentino, aka Pretty Kitty always announces in the weirdest of high pitched, complaining sounds the imminent inevitability of those waves of convulsions that will lead to his regurgitating the contents of his stomach. Such often self-induced by eating my decorative grasses, no doubt a form of self-help. Those dramatic announcements of his have given me the chance to quickly pick him up and carry him to the bathroom to do his thing where cleaning up is a cinch, to the point where this pretty smart kitty would head to the bathroom out of his own accord.

Kitty had a problem with throwing up for a number of years. Only much later was I able to connect the dots to vagrants hanging out in a basement of a vacant property next door. The new owner discovered an unwelcome surprise of a huge amount of disgusting litter that filled his basement. It attracted all the neigborhood cats, no doubt, including mine. I have to confess that even though my bedroom window looks right down on that area, I had never noticed any activity in that home during all those years it was on the market for sale. Yep, this was historically the home of the train master. When it was put on the market it sold the first day for more than the asking price of $350,000, but the new owners run into foundation problems and doubled the price when they put it back up for sale so it sat there empty for I believe 7 years.

Back to Sumo, how is it that this dog can do his business, meaning throwing up or peeing right next to me without my noticing? I must say in our now almost decade of living together he has done so only 4 times. I also like to say that there was a time my pets were not allowed on my bed, much less in my bed. But Sumo in particular it seems to me has maybe a genetic disposition for wanting to curl up under the covers next to his person. While kitty would like nothing better than to curl up with Sumo, nope, I am the focus of this rascal. Same with Isabella, she used to press herself into a small corner of her bed to invite him over and share, but Sumo refused adamantly in the first few years. He would choose the sofa if I would have let him to spend the night alone if not invited to my side. And behold, this tiny guy takes up space preferably right across the middle of my bed. 

So while Isabella used to have the good sense of getting up and wanting to go out to do her business until she got older and of late seems no longer motivated to make such exertions. Thankfully her stomach seems to have settled in a good and healthy routine, now that she no longer is given a chance to ingest raw bones that lacerate her innards and have me in a panic when I would discover her bloody stool. 

I was pissed this morning at 2 am when I had to get up and rinse the sheets out and place them in the washer, to then dig for new sheets to make my bed again from scratch. Anger denotes commonly a lack of understanding and truly I don’t get why a dog would soil his (our) bed? Sumo is fine, he is not sick, but was happy to eat his meal, sardines with pumpkin puree to sooth his intestines, around noon. Yep, having pets can be messy. I get upset more often than I should. My stresses and anxieties do not foster the calm and kindness at all times that I would wish for in my relationships with my furry companions. Always I feel a level of guilt that I could or should be doing better. What I do know though is that I do attempt to relate to each one for real, and not make them into an extension of myself, into babies or kids I never had, or toys to be paraded about. We relate and we do have an understanding of sorts.