Canteloupe the two-year-old Italian Greyhound loves to steal things from her owner’s desk, so a friend decided to set up a camera and catch her red-pawed.
CamelsAndFriends, the YouTuber behind the doggie surveillance operation, writes:
It got me wondering how exactly she gets up there and how she chooses what she steals, so I decided to start filming! I left the camera on a tripod pointed at the desk and a week later these are my results of Cantaloupe’s exploits.
The evidence is clear, ladies and gentlemen. You must find this dog guilty of being cute.
I've written before about how all five furry residents of Shakes Manor want to be wherever we are at all times. Below is a video from a recent Saturday, while Iain was out mowing the lawn, and I was doing a little work in the living room.
Video Description: Dudley is standing beside the couch, staring off into space. "Dudley," I say, and click my tongue at him. He looks at me. "What are you up to? Are you being a good boy?" His ears twitch. I pan to the left, where Sophie is sitting on the arm of the couch right beside me. "What about you, Sophie?" I click at her. "Sophs!" I say in the Sophie voice. I pan back to the right. Dudley looks at me. "Hi, Dudz." Back to Sophs, and the Sophie voice. "Sophs! What are you up to, huh?" Click click. I pan to the right past Dudley, where Matilda is sitting between my feet. "What about you, Matilda? Huh?" Click click. She meows at me. "Yeah?" I pan even further right, where Olivia is sitting on the back of the couch next to my shoulder. "What about you, Livsies?" I make kissy noises at her. "Are you being good, Livs?" I pan back to the left, where Zelda is sitting on the loveseat. "How about you, Zels? Zellzebelle! My Zelly Belly." Dudley walks into frame and starts to climb up on the couch beside me to the right. "Aww, Dudley's gonna join us on the couch. Go on, sit down, monster." He curls himself up in between the pillows. "Oh, what a good boy!" I pan around: Zelda, Matilda, Zelda, Dudley, Olivia, Sophie, Matilda. A bunch of sleepy beasts. The End.
For those who love and request images of inter-species cuddling, here are a few recent snaps for you...
By request, after Olivia's origin story won us a prize just slightly less exciting than a fra-gee-lay leg lamp, below are the origin stories of the other furry residents of Shakes Manor. Please share your pet origin stories and pix in comments!
[Commenting Note: Please note that some people need to purchase pets from breeders for reasons of allergies, and some people will have purchased pets from pet store chains in years before info about puppy and kitten mills was widely known. This should be a fun thread, so I'm requesting no judgment on how pets were acquired.]
Yesterday afternoon, I went into the garden at midday for a moment of meditation to push through a bit of writers' block. I sat in the grass, crossed my legs, and breathed. When I opened my eyes, this is what I saw:
"Zup, Two-Legs? When you're done sitting there all stupid, wanna run around in circles?"
Later, in my office, I turned in my chair after finally finishing this piece, to discover this business:
As you can see, the crate door is open (the only time he's crated is when we're both going out for a long while, because otherwise he gets anxious), and there's a dog bed outside the crate right beside it. (There's also another dog bed beside that one.) He just occasionally likes to wander in there for awhile and hang out. Because Dudley.
[Content Note: Zelda snaps at flies in this video.]
The Adventures of Watch Dog and Not-Watch Dog, Part 5:
Video Description: Zelda lies in the grass on a sunny day, alert. She sniffs my knee, looks around, sniffs the air, twitches her ears. Birds chirps and insects buzz. A fly buzzes past and she swivels her head after it. She tracks the fly, then snaps at it. Snap, snap. Sniffs the grass. Snap. As she remains distracted by flies, I pan to the left. Dudley is lying on his side in the grass. He blinks, stretches, and settles back into his leisure.
Back in February, Cat Fancy announced its "Against All Odds Rescue Contest," which solicited readers' stories about dramatic pet rescues. Misty saw this posted somewhere and emailed it to me, telling me I ought to submit Olivia's rescue story tout de suite. So I quickly typed up the 200-words-or-less submission, fired off a picture, and promptly forgot about it.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got a notice that Olivia and I had won second place, the prize for which was three free bags of litter, lol. I'll take it!
The other day, we received a copy of the magazine in the mail. Here's Livsy's write-up, with her adorbz picture...
My submission (which differs very slightly from what was printed) was: "We were driving to work one morning behind a piece of farm equipment on a rural highway, when a tiny ball of fur fell off the back of the trailer, hit the pavement, and bounced into the verge. I pulled over quickly, and my husband Iain jumped out and ran into the grass to retrieve what turned out to be a small grey kitten. Her face and paws were bleeding, but she was alive. We rushed her to the vet, then raced to work, covered in blood. (Our tardiness was forgiven.) After work, we returned to the vet's office, where she had gotten a chin implant over a nick in her jawbone, been stitched up nicely, and was doing fine. We paid the bill and brought her home to meet her two new feline siblings, who took to her immediately, as if they knew she'd been through enough. We also discovered she was not grey after all: Under a layer of soot, we uncovered her lovely white fur. 'You were a dirty wee urchin, weren't you?' said Iain to the kitten, who looked back at him at mewed from her seat in his cupped hands. We christened her Olivia Twist."
As I've mentioned before, Dudley loves the fuck out of this huge grass bush in the garden. Every time he goes outside, he's got to rub himself all up in it, even though he's got a grass allergy. Basically, the thinking seems to be: "I love this bush! My eyes are itchy! This bush feels scratchy and good on my itchy eyes! I love this bush! My eyes are itchy! This bush feels scratchy and good on my itchy eyes! I love this bush!"
He's also recently added sliding along the chain-link fence to the routine. "Ooh, this fence feels good, too! But not as much as the bush! Gosh, I love this bush! Boy, my eyes are itchy! Well, at least this fence is here! But it's not as good as the bush!"
I cannot dissuade him. I give him his allergy medication and let him carry on his love affair with his unrecognized nemesis.
Video Description: Dudley walks face-first into a large grass bush. He rubs his face in it, then rubs his eyes with his paw. He looks at me and grins, then walks around the bush, back into it, through it, and to the fence, where he commences to rub his face along the fence as he walks alongside it. He turns around and walks back the other way, rubbing the other side of his face. He flaps his ears, then walks right back into the grass bush. Rubs his eyes. Back to the fence, grinning and tail wagging. Walks around the far side of the bush. Rub rub rub. To the fence. Rub rub rub. Rinse and repeat forever.
Sophie is an impossibly tiny cat, with hilariously oversized ears. In my very first post about her, I observed: "She may walk; she may fly." And she puts those ears to good use—she is a hardcore listener, her radar ears always scanning and twitching and gathering information. Cats do this generally, of course, but Sophie does it more—and more intently—than any other cat I've had.
She is fearless and highly empathic, and while part of those qualities are just down to her innate personality, part of them are almost certainly down to the fact that she is just an ardent listener, and uniquely understands the rhythms of the world around her as a result.
Here's Sophs, doing her listening thing.
Video Description: Sophie sits on the arm of the couch beside me, listening. She turns her head from side to side quickly at first, then settles in to let her ears do the work. They swivel and scan, and her stoic expression seems to say: PROCESSING.
One of the special treats I save for Dudley and Zelly on hot days is meatcicles—unsalted beef stock cubes I've frozen in ice cube trays. They basically think this is the greatest thing ever. Last week, when we had a really sweltering, humid day, I sent them outside with the first meatcicles of the summer.
Video Description: Zelda lies on a path in the garden, licking the meatcicle she holds between her paws. She lifts her head at a sound, does a double-take as she notices me walking toward her, then goes back to her meatcicle. Chomp chomp chomp. I walk toward her. Lickity lick. "Is that good, Zelly?" I ask her. "Do you like that, Zelly Belly? Such a good girl." Munch munch munch. Cut to Dudley lying in the grass in one of his usual awkward positions, licking his meatcicle slowly, luxuriating in its delicious meatiness. As I get close to him, he grumbles and gives me the side-eye. "Go on, git it!" I tell him. He goes back to licking it. "I'm not taking it away. Ya little brat." Lick lick lick lick lick. Cut back to Zelda, who's got her butt in the air as she munches on the last bit of her meatcicle. She stands up when she realizes it's gone and sniffs the ground. Dudley comes harrumphing down the path toward us, licking his lips. "Did you enjoy that, Dudley?" I ask him. He looks around, and, once satisfied that Zelda's is all gone, too, he heads for the door. "Oh, what a good boy," I say. Zelly watches him walk by, then puts her nose back to the ground, searching for any little bits she might have missed.
"Just want to make sure you gots no more treats in there, Two-Legs!"
Zelly, as I have mentioned, does not like having her nails clipped. Wait—let me rephrase. Zelly is the Everest of grooming, who has more maneuvers to remove her paw from a human grasp than are conceivable by mere mortals.
Yesterday, my friend Ms. A, who is a talented and patient groomer, stopped by in her Official Capacity (as opposed to her usual capacity as lovely friend) to try to clip Zelly's nails. No go. No go on clipping, no go on filing, no go on grinding, no go on not freaking the fuck out and piddling on the floor and jumping off the grooming table and hyperventilating like we were trying to murder her.
Ms. A managed to clip a single nail.
Well, that's one more than was clipped before! Progress.
After her terrible ordeal that was definitely the worst thing to happen in the history of dogkind, Zelly went to the water bowl to get a drink. Dudley stood guard over her for a change.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
