Chapter Two: Man vs. Woman Otherwise Known as Dog vs. Cat

Man vs. Woman Otherwise Known as Dog vs. Cat

When we adopted our cat from the ASPCA years ago, we were told the cat was male. My daughter, who was six years old at the time, named the cat Andy. I didn’t know much about animals, but it seemed odd that we couldn’t see the, er, plumbing, through his fur. Nonetheless, a few weeks after we got him, I made an appointment at our local vet to have Andy neutered.

I brought the cat to the vet’s office on the day of the operation. I filled out the paperwork; spoke to the veterinary nurse about the procedure and the recovery. As I stood nervously in the waiting room, waiting for the operation to be complete a nurse called me after just a few minutes, “The doctor would like to see you, Ma’am.”

She took me to an examination room. The doctor was an old time country vet. He wore a flannel shirt, Levi jeans, cowboy boots and had a silver belt buckle. He smiled wryly. I was bewildered. He motioned for me to come forward. There was poor Andy, hunched and shivering on the metal table. Doc spun Andy around, pulled down an examination lamp, spread the back legs and pointed, “Him’s a HER!”

I gasped.

“So we’ll be spaying Andy today, not neutering her,” he said with a laugh. “Just thought you’d like to know.”

So Andy became “Andie” because my daughter didn’t want to rename him. I mean her! I never did call the ASPCA to mention their error. It was just another example of mistaken identity. 

* * *

As our cat started getting older, my daughter and I indulged her even more. We gave her kitty snacks two or three times a day, filled her dish whenever it was empty, gave her milk from our cereal bowls and bits of tuna sandwiches. It was intimidating to share the house with a lean, fit dog, who was in essence, still in puberty.

“Honey, the dog’s rubbing his chin on my carpet again!”

“He has acne. It itches!”

But I digress. Rob would measure cups of organic dog food and portion out the proper amount into Shnoop’s food dish. The dog ate only the finest dog snacks from the pet store. They were all-natural, cleaned tarter, freshened breath and contained no fillers or trans fats. No ninety-nine cent pet snacks from Shoprite for this dog!

Andie would enter the kitchen, as she always did and would seem annoyed that Rob and the dog were present. (She’d never forgiven them for the first introduction. On that occasion, Shnoop lunged and barked ferociously at her for twenty minutes, yanking a flustered Rob all over the house by his leash. Rob continuously zapped the dog with an electric shock collar set at level 100. I was shutting all the windows and pleading for Andie to come out from under the furniture. It must’ve sounded like a horrific crime scene. I am convinced that is why our only neighbor doesn’t speak to us.)

Anyhow, back in the kitchen, Rob looked at the cat and greeted her, “Hey there, you big loaf.”

“Can you please not insult my cat?”

“Look at her! She’s completely round.” He leaned down towards her, “How does it feel to look like the letter Q?”

“Stop it,” I pushed him. “She’s fine. It’s winter weight.”

“It’s September!”

I was losing ground. “She’s afraid to play outside like she used to. There are dogs in every yard.”

“Then feed her less.”

“She’s not fat, she’s fluffy!”

Rob raised his eyebrows and cocked his head.

“It’s just fur,” I added meekly.

Rob gloated and ran his hand over the lean dog’s flank. “Yeah, ok. I don’t think fur is supposed to hang down to the floor when she walks. Why don’t you let her walk under our bed and take care of those dust bunnies?”

I scooped up my cat and walked out. Let those boys make their own dinner! We’d have cereal and tuna fish.

* * *

As the months went by, our pets got used to living together. Rob decided to take this to the extreme by trying to make them friends. I told him that this was futile. 

“You’ll see. Someday they’ll sleep together,” he said.

“Only in the grave,” I replied.

There was a constant rivalry for our attention between the cat and the dog. In addition, Shnoop had a habit of moving away from his dog dish before he finished chewing, resulting in a trail of mush that fell out of his mouth onto the floor. I made the mistake of calling Andie to come to me while Shnoop was eating. Well, the dog wanted some attention, too! He trotted over, mouth wide open and planted a stripe of drool and unchewed food onto Andie’s back. I gave the poor cat a bath that night. 

Shnoop was a fairly obedient dog. Andie, however, didn’t let anyone tell her what to do. So Shnoop had to be the independent variable in Rob’s experiments.

I walked in on him one day trying to teach Shnoop to kiss the cat.

“Give her kisses, give her kisses. That’s a good boy.” The dog sniffed and licked at her little face. It was sweet. But an hour later, when the cat came upstairs from her litter box, Shnoop kissed her rear end. 

Rob shouted and scolded the dog.

I jumped to the dog’s defense, “You’re confusing him. How do you expect him to know that it’s alright to kiss one end and not the other?”

* * *