Dog Crime

It keeps snowing and the snow keeps piling up–one, three, or 5 inches at a time. I’m so very thankful for our neighbor, Dale, who faithfully snowblows our driveway for us with his tractor. What a a blessing he is!

Last week I discovered a dog crime.

Before I leave the house–whether for just a few minutes to do outside chores or to run errands–I try to make sure to Hannah-proof the house. Hannah will eat anything edible that she can reach. “Edible” can range from food, paper, dishrags, or cans. She’s practically a goat.

Last year the cats started turning their noses up at dry cat food. Last year was also the year that I began reading the “Cat Who” books by Lillian Braun. The cats in those novels insist on being fed high quality food such as lobster and meatloaf. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe our cats have been reading over my shoulder and have gotten ideas. We aren’t feeding them lobster, but we have switched over to giving them canned food. I store most of the cans in the unheated pantry, but usually keep six or so cans on the bottom shelf of the kitchen island where they are easily accessible and so I can cut down on the number of trips I make to the pantry, especially on cold mornings. After I feed the cats, I put the empty cans next to the sink to wash the next time I do dishes. I then put them in our recycling bin in the laundry room.

For several weeks, we’ve caught Hannah chewing on a can. I thought she was somehow reaching the empty unwashed cans next to the sink, even though I tried to push them back so she couldn’t reach them. But one morning last week, I realized that 1. I knew there had been two cans on the island and suddenly there was only one, 2. Hannah was eating a can on the couch. Although I’m not Nancy Drew, I put two and two together and deduced that Hannah had been stealing FULL cans of cat food from the island. How many has she eaten? Three? Four? Five? Busted!

I don’t know what the punishment for felony theft of cat food should be so I scolded Hannah and found a new place to store the cat food.

Timmy and Clara are getting along ok. Although playful little Clara is obsessed with Timmy’s tail and keeps attacking it. Timmy, who is probably about 15 years old, is not impressed with Clara’s kitten playfulness and sets her a boundary now and then.

A couple weeks ago EJ and I stopped in at our favorite thrift store to hunt for treasure. Just before we were ready to go up front to pay for the items we had found, I happened to spy a picture on the floor, partially hidden by other items. It was a very nice illustration, mounted on wood, of all the lighthouses along northern Lake Michigan in the region in which we live. I excitedly showed it to EJ as I put it in the cart. We declared it the find of the year.

Over the years, EJ has been slowly collecting models of Michigan lighthouses that he finds in thrift stores. It’s always fun when we find one of a lighthouse that we’ve actually visited. We’ve been putting them on a shelf in one of our bathrooms. The lighthouse picture I just bought was too big for the bathroom–and it was too nice for the bathroom, so we rearranged the pictures in our living room and put it there. EJ hung up a shelf that’s been stored in the pantry (which doubles as a storage room) under the lighthouse picture. We placed the smaller lighthouses on the shelf and the bigger ones on the table under it. It looks really nice as you can see in the photo below.