Kitty Snuggles and Playtime

Lately, Miss M had been a little disappointed in the kitties. Kitty P still doesn't want to play with her, and Mr. M has turned into a kitty hog, who doesn't want to let Miss M play with Kitty S. She hasn't had much kitty play time lately and was very sad about it... until today. Mom and Dad decided to take a short nap mid morning and let Miss M nap on the bed with them. At one point, Mom got up to get some water, and the cats followed her back into the bedroom. Kitty P wasn't interested in sharing the bed with a dog, but Kitty S jumped right up. Miss M was soooo happy. She got to snuggle the kitty a little and the kitty started playing with her- even chewing on her foot anytime she would take it off of the cat. We usually feel like the puppies are being too rough with their heavy paws, but the kitty purred the whole time, so apparently, she was okay with it.

Miss M nuzzling Kitty S. Notice how Kitty has her eyes closed. She was purring the whole time.

Kitty P has been warming up to the puppies a little bit, but they don't trust her. She has scratched them a couple of times and even drew a little bit of blood on Mr. M when he got a little fresh one day. Today, she tried playing with the puppies several times- batting at their legs when they would walk by where she was laying on her back under a bar stool. The dogs didn't pay a bit of attention to her. I think they felt like it was a dirty trick.

The puppies have all been doing really well with their training and are getting better at leaving things alone when told. They have had lots of practice at "Leave it," this weekend. Miss M got to leave a frog alone. Miss S and Mr. C got to leave the trash can alone several times. Mr. M got to leave the sign in sheet for Dad's classes alone. Miss B has been trying her hardest to be good- which takes a lot of effort, and all of the puppies have been listening better in general. We were surprised by Miss M yesterday. She doesn't really like going into her crate and most of the time tries to run into the other room. If Mom is in the other room and Dad is putting the puppies into their crates, Miss M usually runs to Mom, hoping for Mom to let her stay out. So yesterday, we went to put them in the crate for breakfast, and Miss M started walking out of the room. Dad said, "Miss M. Go to your crate." It wasn't in a rough voice- just a normal speaking voice. She stopped, turned around and walked right into her crate. Mom closed the door, but we were so happy with her that we let her right back out as a reward.

We thought about taking the puppies to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Easter, but their two legged cousins were going to be having an Easter Egg hunt, and we are pretty sure that our puppies would find all of their eggs and eat the candy before the boys even had a chance. The puppies are very skilled at finding small plastic things to chew on. We bought them some of the Easter egg toys at PetsMart a while back. They had the plastic eggs torn open within minutes and had removed the squeaky toy inside. Unfortunately, they were more interested in the plastic eggs than in the fuzzy toy and proceeded to chew them into tiny sharp pieces, which we then had to pick up before they could eat them. So an Easter egg hunt would have been a bad idea. Plus, it was rainy today, and we didn't really want to go anywhere. Instead, we played in the house.
As an aside, our puppies have a habit of rearranging holidays. At Christmas time for example, we can have a tree, but presents underneath it are risky, given their love of opening boxes. They actually save us quite a bit of money at Halloween. We decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to have candy for trick-or-treaters. The puppies like people, but I don't think they would understand the costumes. I think it would freak them out too much. So instead, we save money and our waistlines by not buying candy- which is handy since we usually end up with way too much candy left over.