A day in the life of the Clappy Household:
This morning my wife went to the vet and picked up our pooch.
The dog is fine and very glad to be home.
While my wife was out, she picked up a few things from the store.
One thing that I noticed was a bag of dry cat food.
I asked Mrs. Clappy, "Why did you buy cat food?"
She said, "What cat food? I didn't buy cat food."
She turned around and read out the words as I pointed to them on
the little blue bag, "C-a-t F-o-o-d".
So instead of going back and returning it to the store, we went out
and bought a cat.
No joke.
I said to my wife, "Hey wife! Why don't we just go buy a cat
instead of returning the food."
She looked at the excited, yet puzzled look on my kids' faces and
said, "O.K." not certain that I was serious.
It had been something we had discussed before our vacation.
We took a drive up to the animal shelter and adopted a cutie.
As we pulled into the gravel parking lot of The SPCA, we were greeted
with the loud barking of approx. 20 dogs who reside there in a row of
outdoor caged shelters.
These were mostly older dogs. Probably strays that were picked up off
the street.
Inside there was a room filled with cats. Maybe 30 or more. All in
separate cages.
5 at a time get their turn for recess in a room filled with scratch posts and
play toys.
Otherwise they spend the better part of the day in a tiny cage.
It was sad to see so many of them there calling each of us to pet them.
We all had our favorites.
As we were petting them all of a sudden we heard the whine of a dog.
Sorta like a cry saying, "Please help me."
We looked over and we saw an incredibly cute Dachshund. She was 6 years
old. I went over to it's cage and it began wagging it's tail like crazy.
As I pet it's little head through the cage with my fingers, I pictured how much
that little weinie dog would love my back yard.
I never, ever thought about owning a dog shaped like a sausage before.
Never really cared for them.
Not until I saw this little one.
My wife went over to the cage and her eyes began to well up with sadness.
She wanted to bring it home, too.
The poor little thing.
So now we had it in our head we were going to come home with a weinie dog
and a cat.
That was until we met the crazy cat lady.
Actually we didn't know she was a crazy cat lady at first.
We thought she worked there.
As we were petting the dog a blonde woman wearing blue overalls and a ski hat
walked in and began grooming the cats and whispering sweet nothings into each
cage calling each one by name.
She took out a steel comb and began grooming each one.
We asked her opinion of a few cats and she knew exactly which ones were the
friendly ones, which were shy, and which were ones who like to scratch.
She knew each and every cat's personality as if they were her family.
Then the cat lady warned us that the Dachshund had been brought in with her
brother and they constantly fought with each other.
The mean little Weinie Dog demanded a lot of attention she exclaimed.
Unlike the precious cats, the dog was rather nasty.
So that talked us out of it.
We picked out a 7 month old kitten. Some sort of a greyish tiger cat.
I was going to name it Dusty but I figured that was already taken.
<jus' kitt'n wif ya>
The cat was already named Spark, so that's what we'll keep it.
We will pick it up after they bring it to the vet to get it spayed.
Next week some time we should be able to bring it home.
Anyhow, as the assistant manager filled out our paper work and asked
us questions we got back on the topic of the Weinie Dog.
She said the pup was pretty nice but it naturally likes to receive a lot
of attention.
We said, "Your employee said that it was rather mean."
She replied in a voice that almost distanced herself from the blonde woman,
"That's lady doesn't work here. She just visits every day to socialize with the
cats."
That's when I realized that something was a littlew bit off skew with her.
The nervous twitch made me wonder about her and what secrets she held.
We had enough sadness for the day and wanted to get out.
If we took another look at the dog we probably would have ended up bringing it
home.
Luckily we didn't.
After thinking about it on the way home we realized that we were not ready for
another dog yet.
We came up with 20 reasons as to why we shouldn't.
While shopping in the pet store for cat supplies, I was haunted by the image of
Weinie Dog.
It was following me. Every corner I turned. It was there.
Where ever I went, pictures of Dachshunds popped up.
Callendars. Books. Pictures. Everywhere. Every shelf it seemed.
Even in the cat section!
In my head, I can still hear it whimpering...
I'm a sucker when it comes to those animal shelters.
Anyhow, I can't wait 'til our cat comes home.
I'll have to try to teach it to act like a weinie dog.
-ClappyTheWeinie |
