For this edition of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap, we’re going to suggest that you turn your speakers to a soft, enjoyable level and listen to this song as you read. It absolutely fits living with this dog.
We we will get to my, well, nipple adventure and some very public napping cats as we go along.
If you followed the musical suggestion, you’ll realize we’ve set the perfect tone for looking at this dog’s face. This is Dudley The Angel, another of our wander-up dogs. My funspouse Martha once took him to a choir rehearsal so she could get other people to convince me that he is a brown dog, not a black dog.
(That's a doctored photo on the left, but in the right light, he has a golden brown sheen. Mr. Handsome!) I’m sure it’s my eyes failing to catch the glory of the brownish golden undercoat on this big ol’ free dog. Martha took the artistic mugshots. I snapped the third one of him and his big muzzle nudging me as I was typing this.
He’s a joy.
That’s him sleeping on a floor pad back in March. (He’s named for the Cary Grant character in The Bishop’s Wife.)
The lead-off photo is of Dudley flat-out on the “dog couch” in our living room. He was on his side and, as we watched him, he ran -- just from the knees down, of course, in the tradition of sleeping dogs. And, in keeping with the theory of this column, we let the sleeping dog sleep.
So did the cats, who were not napping at the time.
When Dudley awoke, still on his side, he had a look that said, “Have you humans been watching me sleep?” Then he went back to sleep.
He has some kind of gift for bringing a smile to your heart.
But don’t they all when your heart isn’t too busy to smile?
Dudley and our Rottie boy, Texas Earl the Cheeseman, frequently share the long couch. And they share the joy of sleeping. Both were free dogs in Dallas. Dudley wandered up, Earl was dumped in Kiest Park.
Animals get dumped in Dallas. Not always by humans -- mostly by humans, but not always.
So, last week we took in a 5-week-old white kitten after his mom moved his three siblings (two orange, one gray) from their under-the-shelter “quarters” in a big hole in a tree trunk in our front yard. I couldn't leave him out there screaming for dinner. I made sure Mom wasn't coming back and brought him into the "emergency cat room," our patio room. We thought he was a girl for three days -- then our vet used his skills and experienced eyes to determine differently.
The point is, this little guy (no photo yet, no name yet, keep visiting readlarrypowell.com and we’ll make the big reveal soon)...the little guy needed some help eating. I bought the kitten milk from our neighborhood PetSmart -- and the puppy nipples because they were out of kitten nipples.
On Friday, I was in a different part of town -- north of the Trinity -- and thought “surely this store will have kitten nipples.” Alas, it did not. This lack of kitten nipples may be an indication of just how fertile cats have been in the EAKS (Early Autumn Kitten Season) around here. The puppy nipples are working fine for the Baby Cat and he’s graduating gracefully to a mix of baby food and cat food. I don’t know how this will affect his mental state, this nursing on a puppy nipple.
So, as I was shopping at the PetSmart on Inwood just north of Forest Lane, buying dog and domestic and feral cat supplies, I did what every animal nut does: I looked at the dogs playing in the “daycare” area, then went to the adoptable cats in their area.
Here are three that I found and two of them are nappers and one is a big orange cat named “Hulk” who I watched wake as I was fumbling to shoot his photo. As you can see, he’s almost human when he wakes. The girl with her paws crossed is Adora. And the semi-turned and rubbable-tummied cat is Nina.
What do they have in common besides being at the PetSmart? They are all adorables that you can adopt from the Humane Society of Dallas County at dognkittycity.org. Adora likes to follow humans as they walk through the house, Nina is a “cuddle bug” and Hulk is described as “big strong boy” and a “sweetheart.”
So, you can see how to adopt these great cats HERE or drop by the PetSmart where, yes, two employees tried to help me find kitten nipples without thinking I was some kind of Dallas weirdo. I'm almost certain.
[LARRY ASIDE: These cats already know how to sleep and at their age, they’re not going to send you off on a mind-bending search for kitten nipples. Honestly, I am a junior college dropout -- can you imagine how I’d feel if I were a college graduate or had a couple of post-grad degrees and was walking around asking strangers “Do you have kitten nipples?” That would be a waste of a degree, wouldn’t it!]
[Send photos of your sleeping dogs and napping cats -- any other beast that nods off in front of your camera from Amarillo lizards to Zany in-laws -- to [email protected] and we’ll post them for the world to see on readlarrypowell.com in our long-running weekend feature, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap. We’ve been publishing sleeper and napper photos since May 14, 2005. That is a lot of dogs and cats. We’re happy to show people how great it is that animals can be such vital parts of the human experience. We also use these photos to demonstrate that insomniacs can find sweet sleep, too, if they’ll just find the right couch or floorpad or huggable human.]
--- To comment, grip your ClassyMouse and click below. ---
