PeaceBang

Boundary Negotiations Continue In the Parsonage

Notice Erm in the background, keeping her distance but comfortable on the radiator:

Just for free, we’re throwing in a velvety ears, smwoft muzzle and paw pads plus curled up Pose of Cuteness for you dog fans:

Notice the cat at rest and the dog in motion. Call Wolf Blitzer, we have a Situation:

“Hey! I tode you is okay to be on dis couch but not dis close! Now you make me yelling!”
Max: “Sorrysorrysorrysorry … just don’t whap me on my snout ‘kay?”

This Just In From The Max and Ermengarde Situation Room

This just in:

The cat and the dog have spent time together in the same room this evening.

They hung out in the living room together. She was wary but maintained eye contact with him without hissing or growling. He slept in my lap as I read. I make a circle with my legs and he cuddles and snoozes there for hours. It’s my own little yoga pose: Beagle Leg Circle Pose.

They hung out in the guest room together. He curled himself on the bed while I tidied up, and she GOT ON THE BED WITH HIM.
Later, on the floor, she paw-whapped him three times in the face while he stood submissively with his eyes closed, obviously praying for her to spend her wrath sooner rather than later. She, satisfied to have asserted her authority and demonstrated superior paw-eye coordination, backed off after I calmly told her that was quite enough.

The are both fast asleep.

For those who have kindly inquired — he is doing marvelously well. No mistakes in the house, has not chewed or destroyed anything but his little sheepskin crate liner (some nimrod at the local Petco said that it was “indestructible”– and yes, we’ve spoken to the manager) and water bowl holder (we got him a little water bottle to clip on outside the crate), is sleeping in his crate pretty well through the night, and is a total delight. He sit/stays already and he smells like a warm hamhock. She is eating well, still feeling loved, and not acting out in any way against the humans.

And now, back to you.

Friday Cat Blogging

Hello readers,

This is ERMENGARDE and I has a few tHINGS To say.

FIRST I would like to say that it is going to take some TIME for me to accept this dog that came to live in MY HOUSE that has been MY and ONLY MINE for six years also I am a CAT and excuse me but we naturally don’t LIKE DOGS. So people who say that I am a spoiled princess are not VERY WELL INFROMED about the nature of CATS- we are not mean we are just PARTICULAR (please don’t say PURRticular because I am not in a very humorous mood) about some things mostly like how we like our HOUSES to not have DOGS IN THEM.

I am living in a room with my food and litter in it and at night I go and sleep with my Human Lady who is my most favorite human mostly except for when SHE ADOPTS DOGS. She says tonight is the last night and I will be on my own after that to sleep alone in my bed, cry outside the door or come in and sleep on the bed as usual even though there is a DOG in the room in a little crate.

This should be interesting. Maybe we might get some sleep. I will have to think about that. Should I sleep on the bed on my little bed or should I smack the dog in his crate? Which would be more fun? This is a hard decision.

Human Lady doesn’t know that I know she is plotting to put catnip on the dog so I will like him. oh boy, I hope she doesn’t do that soon because I need some time to just hate him for awhile. He doesn’t do anything to me and he is appropriately subservient but STILL HEs A DOG, ISN’T HE.

Everyone loves him except for me. I am a non-conformist.

Friday Cat Blogging

“Why is everyone coughing around here? This has got to stop : I only got 21 hours of sleep yesterday!”

Friday Cat Blogging

It’s just the little white paw that gets me.

Friday Cat Blogging

“She went to Florida and she didn’t bring me back a filet of grouper. Not even a- you should pardon the expression — catfish.”

“Talk to the paw.”

“I am NOT chubby. Look: I’m almost bikini-ready! Now please at least go open a can of tuna in the kitchen and we can pretend it came from the Gulf of Mexico. I am not going to stop staring at you like one of those bug-eyed Whitley Streiber aliens until you do.”

We Had a Dog Party And She Wasn’t Invited: Almost Friday Cat Blogging

My friend just came over with her little dog, Shelby, so I had to shut Miss Princess up in my bedroom because she doesn’t like the dogs.
Now that my pal and Shelby are gone, Ermengarde is sniffing around everywhere and crying in a deeply betrayed manner. I’m acting very innocent like “What? Everything’s normal as pie! You’re not smelling a dog, it’s all in your imagination!”

It’s like when your parents went out of town for the weekend and you had a wild party and they came home and were like, “How did this cigarette burn get on the living room couch cushions, young lady?” and you’d say, “I think one of Dad’s friends did that during the Superbowl.” And then they’d say, “Uh-HUH. How about the beer bottles in the garage?” and you’d go, “It’s part of a recycling project I’m working on at school.”

To be honest with you, there is no way I could have ever gotten away with lying to my parents this way. For one thing, my mom has a fantastic honesty detector and would just call me a lying ingrate to my face and for another, my father would have murdered me. By that I mean that the sheer force of his bellowing could strike a person dead. And it’s not me who had the big illegal party in 1981 when Mom and Dad went to California anyway, KAREN MINNETTE BANG.THAT WAS TOI, WASN’T IT?

But that’s how I feel when I sneak a dog into the house past Ermengarde. That was a cute little dog, too. I love that she “fetched” a rain stick from the parlor and brought it to us.

I’m almost done with my sermon and this is what we call sheer procrastination and not going to the gym. Was that fun for you, too? I could keep going, you know…

Friday Puppy Blogging

Meet Arden, SisterBang’s mini-dachsund puppy. HER EYES ARE OPEN!

*snerf, snerf*

Thursday Night, 10:30 pm Cat Blogging

I come home from a late night pre-Christmas confab with my Music Director and see Ermengarde’s love-lorn boyfriend, a fat orange cat named Brinks, outside the kitchen window. I kind of love Brinks. He’s huge and fluffy and he’s a sweet preppy guy you can imagine serving you and g & t on the boat. If he was a human he’d be wearing Docksiders and a polo shirt. I like his people, too, but they live across the street and it’s a busy street, so I worry that Brinks is gonna get creamed traipsing over here to serenade my girl. Who isn’t even a girl since she was spayed long ago. She must still has some mojo, I guess, because Brinks is always over here trying to persuade her to sneak out the window and go on dates with him.

So there’s the fluffy guy in the driveway and I see Erm in the window all bristly and upset and I go inside to talk her down. She has Puff Tail and she’s kind of hyperventilating and gasping. As you may recall, she has asthma so this is not cool. I take a broom outside and fake-whack Brinks and he scuttles away, guilty as sin. “Do you want to kill your girlfriend!” I yell at his retreating back.

Then, inside. Me to the cat: “Now, listen. You need to learn to handle the neighborhood boys better than this. Look at you, all hysterical. He’s not going to do anything to you, he just likes to check you out through the window. {pet, pet} You’d better calm down. Stop being such a spoiled princess. Other cats live on the planet, too, you know. And soon you’re going to have a new doggie cousin who isn’t much bigger than you, and you’re going to have to get along with her.”

And then just because I don’t have kids and I never get to say this, “If you don’t behave yourself, SANTA IS NOT GOING TO LEAVE YOU ANYTHING IN YOUR STOCKING!”

It was kind of fun, actually. She does have her own stocking, of course. She’s received two from members of my congregation and one has her whole name on it in perfect little felt letters. E-R-M-E-N-G-A-R-D-E. It’s that cute, too, hanging in the parlor over the fireplace.

I put the candles in the windows tonight and I swear that’s all the energy I have for Christmas decorating this year. I have never been so not in the spirit of the season. Maybe something magical will happen on the first Sunday of Advent. I’m hoping.

BWOH!!!*

I Can Has Cheezburger is especially cute this weekend. Since I missed Friday Cat Blogging, consider this a CATch-up.

*Bwoh is an exclamation communicating that one is fairly overwhelmed by extreme cuteness.