Suzy Says

Faithful readers will recall how John and I got landed with Mom?s cat. If you?re curious about how that?s working out, her life is still pretty much like a hunted gazelle on the Nature Channel, with our cats chasing her and/or hissing at her, when they bother to acknowledge her presence at all. After 6 months. I have serious doubts about whether they will ever accept her.

Anyway, the challenge (is thatever a good word?) of having the cat is nothing compared to what Megan has dealt with for more months than either of us care to count, and it?s not just because I have problems counting. In addition to Mom, she has no fewer than three dogs in her petite maison. All of them Mom?s. All of them completely untrained and/or neurotic and stinky. They have put me off dogs for life other than Jed the Wonder Dog, who isn?t really a dog. She?s in a class by herself. She?s Jed.

Being around these hell hounds recently has made me realize that dogs are much like children*. If you don?t train them properly when they?re young, they become incurable assholes. Well-trained dogs and well-trained children are as rare as a flawless 2+ carat diamond. Both dogs and children have an unfortunate propensity to pooping and peeing in the house. Both tend to be on the stinky side if not regularly cleaned up by grown-ups. Both tend to be loud (barking or whining dog = howling baby or tantrum-throwing child). Both require excessive amounts of attention, and you have to worry about both of them reproducing at an inopportune time and try to prevent it at all costs.

On the one hand, you don?t have to send your dog to college or pay for its wedding. On the other hand, children tend not to lick you or smell your lower regions with immoderate enthusiasm, though they are, in their younger stages, also prone to jumping on you at inconvenient times and demanding to be fed.

As if battling my non-nurturing nature wasn?t enough, every night it?s as if someone opened a can of dogs and sprayed them all over the floor. I?m convinced that the dogs, though intellectually challenged (see? It?s never positive), conspire to lie between me and the stove, which has to be fed several times a night (keep the home fires burning!) and the table where Mom?s personal pharmacy is (it would be worth a junkie?s while to find his/her way to this isolated place), with which Mom has to be fed several times a night.

The country darkness combined with several nights? worth of sleep deprivation (being woken up every 1-2 hours, every night, and then trying desperately to get back to sleep before being yanked out of it yet again) makes it difficult to maneuver my way without adding to my budding scar collection, and I can say with complete honesty that I?m completely sick of tripping over them and/or climbing over them in the watches of the night.

I am also sick of being a dog doorman (doorperson?) at any hour of the day or night, as they whine to be let out or bark to be let back in. Better than walking them, but not much. And then there?s my personal favorite, the late night Wake?n?Shake, in which the dog(s) lean against the couch I?m trying to sleep on and have loud, intimate and vigorous yet ineffective baths with such ferocity that it?s as if they?re trying to reproduce the ?89 quake by shaking the couch as hard as they can, waking me up yet again.

Can I go home yet? Nurse Suzy and Frontier Suzy need to retire. In every sense of the word.

*Of course, some among you may also have Wonder Dogs (such as Kelly and Candi) and/or Wonder Children (such as Mike & Jennifer), but I haven?t met most of them (yet). So no offense meant. And I realize I?m a cat person and (in most cases) baby-intolerant and therefore prejudiced.