The Day My Dog Made Enemies of Pretty Much Everyone

It was a pretty eventful weekend over here in Splitsville.

Friday, as I sat at my makeshift desk on wheels and looked across my tiny, borrowed room at my makeshift bed in the corner, I began to get a little down about my current situation.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enormously grateful to my brother for giving me a place to lay my head, but I was feeling a little cooped up and needed a change of scenery for a day. 

I called my sister and we decided I would stay at her house Saturday night.

I feel like my siblings have joint custody of their wayward sister right now, which is unsettling because I've always been the one in the family that provided a home for everyone else. It's astounding how life changes in mere seconds.

Before I headed to my sister's Saturday, I took my little dog, Gypsy, for an early morning walk in the park near my brother's house.

We are quite a sight, Gypsy and I, both harnessed up for our walk.

Oh yes, I have to harness up too, by way of a fanny pack containing my phone, driver's license, hand sanitizer, car keys, and inhaler. Then there's the collapsible dog water bowl and container of dog poo bags which hang off my fanny pack. To complete the look, I keep a water pistol in my pocket to blast Gypsy when she goes into a barking frenzy at the sight of another dog. Oh wait...I forgot to mention the straw cowboy hat I wear to keep the sun off my face. (Hashtag: I'mACatch)

I look like a prospector with a belt full of tools hanging around my waist. Which I guess makes Gypsy my unpredictable horse. 

Prospector Lori and her sidekick, Gypsy coming to a park near you.

After our relaxing walk in which I spent most of the time avoiding any path that had another dog on it to keep mine from making an embarrassing scene (who am I kidding, at this point I'm looking at embarrassing in the rearview mirror), we headed to my sister's.

My sister did not tell her husband, John, that I was bringing Gypsy with me. John doesn't care for Gypsy. The feeling was mutual and stemmed from a camping trip last year when we all rented a cabin together in Utah and everyone brought their dogs. For some reason, Gypsy nipped at John's ankles every time she saw him.

I'll have to tell you the story of Gypsy some time. There's a reason she is the way she is and she's actually greatly improved from when I first got her.

Anyway, during our visit Saturday, Gypsy's feelings towards John softened and she tried really hard to endear herself to him, but he just wasn't having it.

I don't think my brother-in-law wants his picture in my blog, so I had to block it out. A rooster is perfect because during the shutdown, my sister cut his hair in a mohawk. He shouldn't be mad about this picture at all.

For a while I thought John was softening a bit towards Gypsy too, but Gypsy put the nail in the coffin of their friendship by squatting on the carpet right in front of where John was laying on the couch. 

Yup. She peed. On my sister's carpet. In front of the guy who didn't like her and didn't want her there.

Perfect. My list of places I could escape to with Gypsy was quickly shrinking. 

And even before the pee incident, Gypsy made enemies of both the cat and my sister (although my sister forgave her later as I will explain).

The only member of my sister's household not mad at Gypsy was her dog Buddy. He lives up to his name. He followed Gypsy around the house, with his nose millimeters from her butt the entire time. 

Making enemies is exhausting.

But back to the cat. My sister's cat, Bo used to be a flight risk, so she kept him inside and only let him out into their small yard if he were on a harness. He's improved though so now he's allowed to wander around the yard unshackled for 20 or 30 minutes at a time.

When Gypsy arrived, she made a beeline out the doggie door and into the yard, where Bo was enjoying his precious yard time. Bo took one look at Gypsy and his tail poofed up like Monica's hair in Barbados. Bo must have threatened to shank Gypsy, because she high-tailed it back in the house and none of us saw what happened to Bo.

We didn't think too much of it as we visited for the next 20 or so minutes. Then my sister went outside to bring Bo in because his prison yard time was up, and she freaked out because he wasn't out there.

We looked all over the house and couldn't find him. My sister was worried that Gypsy had scared Bo so bad he jumped the wall and escaped from the yard, so we walked up and down the street calling him. No go for Bo.

I was helping my sister paint her nightstands, so we continued on that project, with one of us breaking every so often to go outside and call for the cat. After about two hours and still no sign of him, we knocked on neighbors' doors asking if they'd seen him and drove around the neighborhood looking for him. We made flyers and put them on the mailboxes and she posted a picture of him in the Next Door app, hoping someone had seen him.

Through all of this, my sister was cranky and short with me and Gypsy and I was just beginning to think I was going to be sleeping that night in my little cot in my borrowed room and not in my sister's guest bed. That thought made me cranky too.

I can't blame my sister for being upset though. It wasn't the first time a cat went missing while I visited her. Back in her old house, way back when I was still coloring the gray out of my hair, I was at her house and she had just applied my hair color when we heard a cat crying.

The sound was coming from beyond her backyard wall and sounded like her cat. She begged me to go walk around the corner with her to check. So me and my head full of auburn hair dye followed her around the corner and towards the sound of the crying cat. Sure enough, it was her cat and he was caught in a storm drain.

Long story short, neither the fire department nor animal control would help us get him out. We called our cousin's husband because he was the most likely person we could think of that might have a tool to pull off the storm drain cover so we could get the cat out. Meanwhile, a crowd of neighbors had gathered and I felt utterly ridiculous, standing there with hair dye drying on my head and staining my face. 

My cousin's husband did, in fact, have just the right tool and he saved the day and the cat was rescued. Not too long after that, the cat disappeared again and was found several weeks later several miles away, by a good samaritan who recognized him from a lost pet Craigslist ad.

So my sister had reason to worry on Saturday when Bo disappeared, is my point. She was completely upset and freaked out until she heard a sound that changed everything. A meow that sounded like it was coming from the heavens.

Cat on a hot potshelf

Turns out Bo was too fat to jump on the wall and escape the yard so he hid out on a potshelf in my sister's kitchen and was there the entire time, never once bothering to answer as we called out for him for three hours.

My sister was relieved and Gypsy was off the hook so all was well and I did get to sleep in an actual bed, which really was heavenly.

My story of  the shenanigans at my sister's house isn't quite done yet though. 

My daughter Rachael stopped by during the whole missing cat kerfuffle and once he was found and my relieved sister could relax, we all had a cocktail. My sister began dispensing marriage advice to newly married Rachael.

Specifically, how to get your husband to put his dirty underwear in the hamper and not on the floor two feet from the hamper. This problem plagued my sister for several weeks when she was first married.

That quickly changed when she started picking up the dirty underwear, folding them neatly, and placing them back in her husband's underwear drawer among all the clean ones.

Problem solved.

That piece of advice is not unlike advice she gave me to do to my now ex, while I was still living with him, but after I discovered his betrayal.

She suggested I buy a pair of men's boxer shorts, dirty them up a bit, and throw them in his dirty clothes hamper for him to find the next time he did his laundry (because obviously by then I was certainly not doing it). Just to fuck with him.

It was a deliciously wicked idea, but I moved out before I could pull it off. I'll file that one away to use on the next guy, should it be necessary and if there ever is another guy.

So that was Saturday.

On Sunday, Gypsy and I stayed away from cats and dogs and other enemies and spent a quiet day at home. I earned my keep by helping my sister-in-law, Emma, clean her oven and the kitchen blinds and by making dinner.

Then we drank a bit too much wine and I helped her do some computer stuff that was a little too technical for her and we giggled about the finger-shaped mouse icon not being on the right "spot" to get the task done. I used my country bumpkin accent which we found way more hilarious than I'm sure it actually was.

Then it was bedtime. And that was pretty much my weekend.

How was yours?

Signed,

Prospector Lori 

My misunderstood Gypsy.