Finally home with both animals back. Apparently I have the kids that can not behave outside of the home. Lily whined and was generally super needy the whole time I was gone, and according to Tammy, Tunch refused to use the litter boxes and in a fit of pique shit on her pumpkin table display.
Bastard.
General Winfield Stuck
Cats play hardball.
Robertdsc-iphone
Perhaps we should send Tunch to deal with the Blue Dogs & fuckup Senators.
Royston Vasey
Lol, Lol and trice LOL!!
Love those cat antics.
=)
Anne Laurie
Welcome home, John. Doesn’t it feel good to be needed?
Arclite
My cat pissed on everything when we moved to the new house. Cats take it personally, whereas dogs just say, Oh, well, guess I’ve dropped another rank in the pack I guess.
jl
Glad Cole got back OK. Sorry to hear that Lily hadz a badz sadz.
As for the Tunchinator, did I not inquire about whether Cole provided informed consent to the Tuchsitters beforehand, or what?
Doonhamer
Welcome home. So how happy was Lily to see you again?
Demo Woman
Pet sitters are going to be hard to find. I thought that Lily did pretty good at your parents house.
Demo Woman
fyi, Kristen was going to send you a picture of Sam in his Halloween finest. We’d also like to see a picture of the animals.
Beauzeaux
Doonhamer and I both need to know: how did Lily react when she saw you again?
beltane
Maybe next time you should get someone to come to your house and feed Tunch. Cats prefer solitude in familiar surroundings than company in a new setting. He would have been pissed wither way, but if he stayed home at least he would not have behaved so scandalously.
General Winfield Stuck
Libby en scary.
Doonhamer
@Beauzeaux:
If the reactions of my rescue greyhounds and rat terriers to my return from one of my frequent business trips are any sort of benchmark, we’re talking almost puppy critical mass and mushroom cloud.
Thank the FSM no Lilys were harmed during the course of this homecoming.
Steeplejack
Ah, good times. You can’t buy memories like that.
Maude
If Tammy has cats, then Tunch smelled something and wouldn’t use the box. Lily is needy and she’s done so well so far.
I can’t believe I’m sitting here defending a cat and a dog.
Keith G
@beltane:
This. Always use a cat sitter. Always.
I do so admire Tunch. I wish he was a Democratic Senator.
RedKitten
@Demo Woman: I emailed it to him earlier this evening. If he doesn’t post it, I’ll try to put it up in my Flickr account tomorrow.
kommrade reproductive vigor
The pets have figured out if they’re too obnoxious, no one will watch them and you’ll never leave them again.
John Cole. Prisoner of Love.
AhabTRuler
I give you punkins in the light, and punkins in the dark (fire for effect).
Have safe Halloween!
Warren Terra
“Bastard” you say? Surely a bastard is someone who doesn’t know who their daddy is, while you’re explicitly complaining about precisely the opposite case: that he’s too attached to his daddy.
Tim O
No more vacations for you, slacker.
Tunch needs a good tazing.
Take it easy, I’m joking! Why isn’t anybody laughing?
gogol's wife
I’m reading The Brothers Karamazov for the 6000th time because I have to, but I find The Adventures of Lily and Tunch so much more enthralling.
Terri
I can’t stop laughing. Only because I’ve been there. The bribes I have to offer my friends to pet sit for me, would make a DC politician blush.
AnneS
So I’ve been jonesing for the Tunchie for so long… chances of a pixture?
Just Some Fuckhead
You can just leave the cat at home and have someone drop in once or twice (if at all). Worse case scenario, there’s a vacancy open for a new puppy.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I was thinking the same. I’ve left cats indoors for up to three days. You just need one of those gradual food dispensers, and some water, or the toilet lid up, cause if you leave three days worth, they will every last morsel the first hour your gone.
AhabTRuler
Also, an
scaaaaaryadorable black cat & a skull!metalgirl
#22 Terri — do tell!!! Maybe if I knew your secrets, I’d know how to get pet sitters for Suzie Q (my inherited pit-lab-maybe chow mix, rescue girl). If you’re a UPS truck, she looks like a pit bull. If you’re coming to visit, she will beat you with her wagging tail.
General Winfield Stuck
Looks like Henri, International Cat of Mystery.
CaseyL
Priceless:
This is so wonderful I laughed for a very very long time. It’s wonderful because, among other reasons, we really don’t know whether the Tunchdump was an emphatic denunciation of being taken from his home and forced to stay with strangers, or an equally emphatic comment on the hokeyness of pumpkin displays.
Also, I’m either very lucky or very wise, because it’s never occurred to me to do other than leave the cats at home and have someone drop in to look after them.
AnneS
Plz go Phils tonight… and welcome home John. Glad you made it home safely. Still need the Tunchinator fixies…. And happy Halloween to all! Not many trick or treaters this evening… more candy for the DH! Good night to all. And plz go Phils!
Terri
@metalgirl
Mostly a fridge full of food, alcohol, money, and some things it’s best I not post on the internet.
Fulcanelli
Hey John, the Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventurers” show is broadcasting tonight live from an abandoned insane asylum in West Virginia somewhere. Is that place anywhere near you?
3 Local folks are going in to hang out and presumably poop their drawers in fright. You should blog from there overnight sometime and tell us what’s happens. I dunno about bringing the pets, though. Heh.
Anne Laurie
@Doonhamer:
Fixt.
Bad Horse's Filly
It’s kind of like finding out your kid is the one in daycare who hits and bites all the other kids. It’s a natural stage, but still you feel like the world’s worst parent with the world’s worst kids.
Skepticat
I see a nice gift in Tammy’s future–from Cole, not another from Tunch, that one was more than sufficient. I think pets definitely do better in their own surroundings, but it isn’t always easy to find the right person to help out with that. Or any person.
Steeplejack
@Fulcanelli:
Fix’d.
Fulcanelli
I’ve heard that pets can take on the vibe and disposition of their human companions, often reacting to stressful situations in very similar ways.
Desert Rat
@beltane:
I can’t emphasize this enough. My wife has a friend that we trade petsitting service with. When she’s gone, my wife goes to her house twice a day to tend to her pets, and ditto here, with her friend and our cats. Works out nice, no money changes hands, and we both have somebody we can trust.
Our cats aren’t happy without us there, but at least they aren’t uprooted and in unfamiliar surroundings.
GReynoldsCT00
I’m sorry your animals had such separation anxiety, but Tunch’s dump is just TOO funny…talk about a trick on Halloween
Doonhamer
@Fulcanelli: Your observation combined with Anne Laurie’s comment in a rather vivid and frightening manner. Quite appropriate for Halloween. Bravo.
josefina
Did you give Tammy a kidney or what? Lily bites her face; Tunch shits on her table; she doesn’t tell you to fuck off with your fucked-up animals. She’s a rare treasure. Even if you have already given her a kidney, you should be first in line to donate should she need another.
* As others have suggested, get a cat-sitter for Tunch. Cats tend to be reassured by familiar places. He’ll spend 99.9% of the time he’s not eating on his beloved futon, so it’ll be almost like you’re there.
* Dogs tend to focus more on people; rescue dogs (like yours, like mine) often have serious separation issues. I could tell you what’s worked for me and my dog but that’s a little like Andrew Sullivan offering you relationship advice. And so—
* Find a good trainer, someone who pays attention to Lily’s temperament and yours. Ask your vet. Ask sane-seeming owners of sane-seeming dogs. Be prepared to go through a few duds before you find the right person. You need someone to help you, specifically, communicate with Lily, specifically. Just as there’s no uniformly successful child-educating method, there’s no uniformly successful dog-training method.
RedKitten
Sam in his Halloween costume. :)
Irony Abounds
There have to be university students willing to housesit/petsit for you. That kills two birds with one stone: your house is safer and your pets happier. And Tammy doesn’t have cat shit on her pumpkin display. She must be a saint to take your animals.
josefina
God Delmonte! I made very sure to close the “strong” tag and I did not fall for any of XHTML’s promises of alternative tags. I was a good girl! It wasn’t my fault! Really!
mcd410x
Lol. That’s just great: Go Tunch.
RedKitten
Sam in his Halloween costume (sorry if this posts twice — I thought I had hit “submit”, but maybe not.)
John Cole
Camera is dead.
Delia
Last vacation I drove 800 miles to visit my sister. I was gone for ten days and took the dog with me. I paid a neighbor girl $50 to feed the cats and clean out the litter box. She wants to be a vet and was ecstatic with the arrangement. The cats were a lot happier than they were with going off to the cat kennel. I just don’t have a good solution for when I have to leave the dog. He hates the kennel and it’s expensive.
General Winfield Stuck
RIP
Max
I recommend professional boarding. Its all cageless now and while expensive, you don’t feel bad if your pets are a pain in the ass.
calipygian
@Keith G:
He is. Tunch is Lieberman before he joined the Connecticut for Lieberman party.
Fulcanelli
@Fulcanelli:
One the show’s hosts told a story a few minutes ago about an insane person held here nicknamed “the Bedpost Killer”. He reportedly punched another inmate in the neck claiming he was stealing the air in the room.
Let’s see:
Neurotic pets. Check.
Neck punching. Check.
A dead camera. Check.
Diagnosis: Either move or get an exorcism Mr Cole, stat. The power of Christ compels you.
Genine
Welcome home, John!
Tunch and Lily’s reactions are about what to be expected. I’m sure they’re glad you’re back. :-)
Steeplejack
@RedKitten:
Oh, that’s hilarious! Who’s a ittle Halloween bear? You’re a little Halloween bear! Nom-nom-nom-nom!
Of course he’ll hate you for this in 15 years. You know that.
Doctor Cleveland
Tunch: overcome with iatropic excitement.
Cats, I’ve been told, to avoid the litterbox out of anger or pique. They start to have an anxious or fearful association with the litterbox, and think of it as an unsafe place.
Doctor Cleveland
Cats, I’m told, do NOT avoid the litterbox out of anger or pique.
(Sorry about that.)
Jennifer
I have an arrangement with the next door neighbors – when they’re gone, I feed their dogs; when I’m gone, they come by once a day to feed the kitty. She hides from them because she’s afraid of everyone but me, but for a cat with this type of temperament especially, being home is less stressful.
When I was in school, I had a cat with a much more outgoing personality. I had to leave him with mom & dad the summer I went to Europe – and they had two cats. So you can guess how much my spoiled single-cat was loving that arrangement.
First he peed on my mom’s slippers. Next he got up on the bathroom counter and peed on her hairbrush. It was personal. Finally, he got pissed off enough that he ran off. My parents spent the next 6 weeks looking for him; I knew exactly when it happened because they were weird on the phone. “Roscoe? Oh, he’s…fine.” Anyway, right before I came home, they finally did find him – he had been hanging out at some apartments a few blocks away and eating bugs. Once I came back, he didn’t do any more running away – he was just pissed because I was gone and he didn’t have the plush setup he had with me at school.
They can be very spiteful creatures.
josefina
@Doctor Cleveland: Tunch, “overcome with iatropic excitement”? Desperate to see a physician? I’d need to see a peer-reviewed article.
Whatever you’ve been told, anyone who’s lived with a cat knows that their expression of anger and/or pique is limited only by their physical capabilities. Shitting outside the litterbox? Pfft! Not even kitten’s play.
(You get credit for spelling “pique” correctly. Beyond that—WTF?)
Anne Laurie
@Delia:
We have three rescue dogs, one in particular with severe separation anxiety. I’ve been happy to use Sydney’s neediness as an excuse not to accompany the Spousal Unit on cross-country visits to the inlaws.
Apart from finding a claustrophiliac spouse, the standard suggestion is to de-sensitize your guy by leaving him at the kennel for the day or overnight occasionally. Also expensive, but at least you’re not worried that the poor guy is going to injure himself from sheer anxiety when you do have to leave him “at camp” for a while…
bystander
Wow. Tammy gets to claim a kidney and bone marrow. What josefina said. That kind of separation anxiety in a dog is painful for the dog as well as for the pet sitter. If Tammy’s brave enough to take it on again, I’d at least arm her with some doggy Valium.
My own suggestion, as an alternative to josefina’s, would be several short stays at your local doggy day-care facility. Maybe just a couple of hours, a couple of times a week, for 3 – 5 weeks. Lily needs to develop the confidence that you will come home, and you will come back for her. Do you have a Camp Bow Wow nearby?
NutellaonToast
DUMPKIN!
SiubhanDuinne
NutellaonToast: WIN!
catclub
As long as Tunch does not napalm Cheltenham in a fit a of pique, I don’t see your problem.
Davebo
Both dogs and cats will fuck up.
The difference is, when they are busted dogs will literally beg for forgiveness, while cats will just say “shut up or I’ll shit on your pillow”.
Hookers and Cocaine
Too bad the Steelers have a bye, I look forward to seeing them lose next week, however. Hope the Cowboys run up the score on Seattle. There’s nothing better than taking advantage of the weak. I love that.
lee
Lily is a commenter here?
Jane2
Best thing with cats is to leave them in their home so they can snarl at the caregiver who throws them food and scoops.
TheHatOnMyCat
Cat’s don’t do these things in a fit of pique. They leave scent messages thinking that this will help you find them.
Stella Gorlin
I’m not at all surprised to hear that they didn’t do so well! I agree with previous comments, you should leave Tunch at home and have someone come in to feed him and give him a little love every day or so. Lily is probably so imprinted on you now that she’s bound to have some separation anxiety. I’d try to nip it in the bud now with serious socialization work. Maybe get a dogwalker once a week or find some doggie day care to get her used to being away from you.
Shell Goddamnit
This is what happens when you have creatures for whom you are their whole dependence & delight. Ya gotta treat em a little rougher if you want them to be more emotionally independent.
Either that, or find the good dog-camp in your area where your dog will greet you casually upon your return because she is having SUCH a good time she’s not sure she wants to come home yet. It hurts, yes, but it hurts you, not your dog. You’re tougher.
Barbara
Lily’s reaction is probably normal. I adopted a beagle who had three previous owners by the time she got to me and she was needy in the same way. For a long time, anytime we went anywhere, however briefly, was interpreted as complete abandonment, and the howling and wailing would have been tragic if it weren’t so comical. When my other dog (her companion died), though, my neighbor told me that when we were gone and she was outside she spent hours crying like a child. They are deeply social animals but they don’t have long-term memory and they can’t interpret your plans.
susan
Someone might have all ready told you this, but, in my experience, always have someone come to your house to care for your cats. They like to stay home in familiar surroundings – expecially an indoor cat! When you return, they will punish you, but will forgive you very quickly.