These are my cats.



This is my dog.



This is my cat on top of the refrigerator.



Any Questions?


So Janie is great: fairly obedient, house trained, very loving, submissive, playful (but not hyper). She can sit on command and shake (but only if there's a treat). She can also fetch until the game becomes too exiting for her and she feels compelled to run around in circles ignoring you and thus ending the fetch game. She is protective of me (growls and strangers, men and people with pet smells on them). She is loyal, and when she gets nervous, she knows her mama and comes to sit as close to or even on my feet if she is able.

Truthfully, "the cats" are getting better with Janie who is also getting better with the cats. The first few days they growled and slapped her and she chased them at which point the top of the refrigerator became their new home. Zorba has yet to return to anywhere else. Potter though is younger and secretly wants to befriend Janie while still maintaining a macho "I run this place" attitude. First he ventured to the top of the table... then to the hallway at night... then into my doorway... my bed and now will even stay on the bed if Janie jumps up to join us (until Janie wants to put her paws on Potter at which point he runs away). As you can see, they are getting along much better.



I even caught them both sitting on the couch gazing out the window together one day when I returned home from work. They'll also both lay on the floor now in the same room at a fairly close proximity and not disturb each other.

Zorba however, hates Janie and sticks to the countertops and the refrigerator. Seriously.



Last month (pre-Janie) I took the brave step of putting in a kitty door. The cats have been loving that - going in and out as they please. It's me who worries and has to be big enough to let them go. But I locked the kitty door when I adopted Janie. After exposing the cats to janie for a week and finally confident that they wouldn't run away in protest, I let them go back outside again. So they seem pleased about that. Zorba even came down from the fridge for lovin' today while Janie was outside. Baby steps.

Unfortunately, Janie has some health issues. She was a shelter dog on death row that an adoption agency took to find a good home for her. While under their care, she couldn't receive all the tests and meds she needed. So after a trip to Dr. B, my vet, I've discovered that janie has a mild case of heart worms and also something in her intestines that is contagious to humans. Granted, it's only transferable from fecal to mouth, but little miss hypochondriac, as if she wasn't washing her hands enough, is now verging on compulsive. But it's all treatable. And Janie has none of the side effects they predicted: pain, appetite loss, lethargy. She eats like a pig and even ran around like an ape gone mad in my house this evening. I do have to be careful about that though because she is not supposed to be active! Although it's hard to keep a dog bedridden, she can't get excited for more than five minutes because the medicine is killing worms in her heart and is therefore hard on the heart. So after thinking, "good god, the dog's gone mad" when she began herding nothing around the house and even crashed into the back door she was running so fast, I finally got her to sit still and chew on a bone. Whew!

So that's the news on the new dog and the boogerheads. More to come, I'm sure. But our next adventures lie in the musical Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, my family flying/driving in and Mom and Amy experiencing Holy Week for the first time! Stay tuned...