Sunday, July 08, 2012

My great big puppy

Perkins got away again last night. In the dark, when I was taking him out for one last potty break for the night. I ran to try to keep up with him--clearly a lost cause, but I need to keep him from getting TOO far ahead of me. Whoever he was running to greet apparently ignored him, and he started to run back in my direction. I called him, but he just started to run past me. 


Then I tripped. I have no idea who it was that suggested pretending to fall as a way of getting a dog to come back. I wasn't pretending when I fell, but I remembered the idea at that moment and stayed down. Perky came to me, and I was able to get a grip on his harness and lead him back to the house.

Anyway, we are now reevaluating how old this boy actually is. Socrates, the first cat Demetrius and I adopted together, died when he was allegedly only 8 years old. I say "allegedly" because that was his accurate age only if he was genuinely 2 when we adopted him from a shelter in Chicago. Since that time, I've learned that shelter are often only "guess-timating" when they tell you an animal's age. Absent any dental evidence to the contrary, it seems like adult cats of unknown origin are always two years old. 

It seems like the opposite may have happened with Perkins. Supposedly, he will be 4 in September. He sure doesn't act it. But I assumed what the shelter told me was accurate due to his circumstances. According to his description, he ended up in the shelter after his owner died. I thought he'd been brought in by a family member, but apparently that is not the case.


All I was able to find out is that the mailman found him, got someone he knew to look after Perkins temporarily, and it was *that* individual who signed the release papers at the shelter. So it appears there is no "solid" evidence that I actually adopted a 3 1/2 year old dog. And he sure still has a lot of "puppy" in him!

Lucky for me, my boy is not always on the move...


18 comments:

  1. Howard Dean is first and Perkins is silly boy!

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    1. No more than usual. At any given moment I have about half a dozen bruises on my legs, and I generally don't remember how I got them. Typically from bumping into things around the house--like Metri's bicycle, which is currently in the living room. I've actually re-bruised the same shin on one of the pedals.

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    2. Glad you weren't hurt.

      I also often have mystery bruises. Fun, isn't it? *sigh*

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  3. Apparently puddle is still waiting on the electric. :-(

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  4. Renee, I'm so glad Perkins came back to you, though I'm sorry you had to trip and fall to make it happen.

    Yes, most of the cat's we've gotten from the shelter have been two years old. The exception was Nicky, who was about six months, like, I think really. Seems to me Binky was something between six months and a year when we got her too. But all the out-of-state cats have been two. I suppose that's a good age for them to say, no longer kittens but not old. There's nothing like truth in advertising, eh?

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  5. Listener, any word from Puddle?

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    1. Not yet. Wild day here (but a good one) and I haven't had time to call her today.

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  6. Weeded at the Root Center for several hours, then came home and actually sat on the porch and read a book...for about 15 minutes before I fell asleep with a kitten on my lap. Then I migrated with the kitten to the couch and had a long snooze and woke up with two kittens snuggling with me. In between events Sweetie set off for a neighbourhood condo meeting (he's Treasurer) but came home about 15 minutes later. Turns out we'd missed emails saying the meeting was postponed, but in the brief conversation Sweetie had with the President of the Association it was determined that we =DO= at last get reimbursed for putting in new trees after the big windstorm blew down 4 trees! Awesome!! Better than that, we learned that in addition to our most troublesome neighbour having sold her condo last month, our second most troublesome neighbour has just sold her condo as well! Whoo hoo!! Add to that that the inconsiderate neighbour over on the other side has put his condo up for sale, and well...it starts as a warm glow just about the center of one's chest. ;-)

    Root Center note: We are pretty sure that the Root Center's compost is NOT the sort laced with herbicides. The bad stuff kills lots of things and clover is chief among them. Well, I certainly pulled clover out of the gardens today. Nothing shows any problem except some blight on some of the tomatoes. And that's an ongoing problem in these parts anyway.

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    1. Mind you, we've waited a really long time to have the neighbourhood condo Association not be a really big annoying aspect of life here. Nice to think we've survived the dark days. Not that we expect the new folks to be gloriously easy to work with (haven't met them yet) but anything in the average/normal range would be cause for celebration!

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  7. The kitten snuggling sounds, the removal of the neighbor problem sounds nicer, and the good news about the Root Center's compost best of all.

    A good day.

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  8. Well said, Cat! Well said. :-)

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  9. Don't think I shared this here, but speaking of neighbors...

    The following happened about a week ago, while the power was still out. I took Perkins out on his leash around 4 in the morning. Some guy parked across the street in a pickup truck said "nice dog". I mumbled "thanks", or something like that.

    Perky had done his business, so I headed back to the house. Guy said "I didn't mean to scare you" but then followed that up with "bring your dog over here so I can see him". Um, no.

    The truck stayed there for a couple hours, and Demetrius noted that they (more than 1 guy? No idea--I didn't even have my glasses on) walked away from the truck. Eventually, against D's recommendation, I called the police to report what at least potentially seemed like "suspicious activity". They *did* send someone over, and eventually we got the story that it was the son of the neighbor across the street, and the son had run out of gas. (This is NOT a favorite neighbor as he frequently has friends over, plays loud music, and they all drop a truly impressive number of "f-bombs" at all hours of the night.)

    One of my "endearing personal quirks" is that I dislike calling people on the phone. I was *especially* hesitant to call the police, but I was pretty freaked about the whole experience. For some reason my husband was more concerned about potentially pissing off the neighbors.

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    1. Ooh, Renee, scary! I'm glad you called the police, as that could so easily have been the start of something awful.

      Sis hates using the phone too, so I understand.

      Demetrius' concern about pissing off the neighbors sounds about right. Not sure if it's a guy thing or specifically a husband thing, but he is pretty typical, I'd say. Needless to say, *you* were right.

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    2. Thanks. I kinda needed to hear that.

      The house right next door to use is vacant, and someone recently stole copper out of the air conditioning or something. So I'm already aware that there have been some not-so-savory characters about. And the whole scenario just made me feel really vulnerable--power out, couldn't see who was speaking to me, wee hours of the morning...ick.

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  10. I concur, you did the right thing. That guy was weird.

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