Our one year old tears through the kitchen as if on an urgent mission. My husband yells “Slow down!” as I leap out of her way. From the other room we hear her skid around the couch and possibly crash into the wall and/or the tv stand, and we can only hope there are no injuries. Then comes the hissing sound, which means the cat has been interrupted from his nap on the couch and is less than thrilled with the intrusion. More skidding around the wood floors now, which means the chase is on and it’s time for us to intercede. Sighing, we peek into the living room. The cat has climbed to the top of his kitty condo to avoid Hurricane Gracie, and is staring down with a look of disdain, his yellow eyes narrowed to a slit and his ears crooked. He makes eye contact with me, as if blaming me personally for the situation at hand, and looks back down at her with the same disgusted expression before turning his back to her and laying down with a huge sigh. Across the living room, she lays on a huge beige pad. Head down and eyes closed as if she had been sleeping for hours. That’s our Gracie…a 65 pound Belgian Malinois.
We adopted Gracie from an animal shelter when she was a baby. Our previous two dogs had passed away and our teenage daughter had begged for a new one. We were happy to honor that request…our other daughter had received a dog in her teens so we felt it was only fair. We first visited the local shelter and brought home the most darling 2 year old Cocker Spaniel/Papillion mix. She was promptly named Lilly, given a bath and new collar, and I immediately took to carrying her around under my arm. This dog and I were instantly in love, and the whole house was buzzing with excitement, and then….she bit our daughter. Then she bit my husband. Then she bit my daughter again. The family (except for myself, since she never showed aggression toward me) became nervous around her…not wanting to pet her or even go near her. And frankly as much as I adored this dog I was concerned for the safety of our cat Schatzi. Sadly, we had to return her the next day…this was NOT the experience we wanted our child to have with her first dog.
On to another shelter the next week. On this trip our daughter found a puppy, about five months old, huddled in a cage with another puppy and an adult dog who was clearly not her mother. She was dirty, and skinny, with tan fur and over-sized ears. One look and it was all over. We brought her home and introduced her to Schatzi, who seemed mesmerized by her – he had never seen a puppy before, only adult dogs. The puppy, who was named Gracie within a day or two, wanted nothing more than to play with Schatzi. The cat, however, wanted only to smell Gracie’s ears and nose – a request the puppy was unable to sit still long enough to accommodate. As time passed, the cat and puppy started to bond in their own strange way. Gracie would run at the cat and grab any part of him with her mouth (without using teeth), and Schatzi would pull away and hit her in the face (without claws). They would chase each other and scamper through the house, play biting and play scratching, then lay down a distance from each other, each keeping a wary eye on the other in case of an unanticipated attack.
As the months passed, Gracie grew much larger than the cat – who is about 14 pounds, and although they still play in the same manner, they are now much rougher with each other. There have only been a couple of minor injuries, thank goodness. Gracie, who has a hard time understanding the difference between a playful cat and a pissed off cat, has had her nose scratched fairly violently (but not bad enough to require much attention). Schatzi found himself at one point with his throat in the dogs mouth, and although I realize Gracie was only playing, and is always careful about her teeth, I instantly flew across the room and tackled the dog to the floor, laying on top of her while I held her mouth shut and shouted “NO BITING, NO BITING”! She never touched his throat again. She has learned how to "bob and weave" to avoid the cats quick jabs, and ends up running circles around the cat while trying to get her mouth on him, while he simply sits in one spot, spinning to face her.
Gracie loves to follow the cat into the kitchen when he is eating his dry food. His bowl is up on the kitchen island (to keep Ms. Piggy the dog from inhaling it all), and as the cat eats he knocks pieces of kibble onto the floor. Gracie sits at the island, looking up at cat expectantly. The cat calmly eats his food, but is clearly uncomfortable with the unblinking dog staring at him from a foot away. As soon as a piece of food hits the floor, the hunt is on – Gracie becomes a Bloodhound, nose to the floor as she snorts around the kitchen trying to find that tiny morsel, pushing chairs out of her way and trying to squeeze her face under the refrigerator. It’s become a small way for me to entertain myself now…picking up a piece of cat kibble and tossing it haphazardly onto the kitchen floor while Gracie is in the other room, and watching her dash into the kitchen to try and find it.
Gracie Is full of quirks: She is very sensitive to sound; Open a bag of chips and she leaps up to run behind the couch, sneeze while she’s next to you and she jumps out her skin, and if you drop a computer mouse on the wood floor she’s pretty much run halfway across the city before you even pick it up. If there is a doorbell sound on the television she runs to the front door barking, and will only relax when you open the door to show her nobody Is there. She insists on perching on the back of the couch – which used to be the cats spot – which explains our droopy couch cushions. And she is obsessed with licking my bare feet (I have mixed feeling about that).
So here we are, 7 months into life with Gracie, watching her pretend to sleep in her doggy bed while the cat, still disgruntled from being licked while he was snoozing, heavily blows air though his nose to let everyone know how he feels at the moment. Hubby and I stand watching the two of them, and smile at our fur-mily.
