once... twice... four months a lady

Princess Fiona is four months old today. Oscar is still smitten with her. Aslan is allowing her to be in the same room with him without growling. Trevor is tired of having a baby sister and wants to trade her in for a pony.

So if you'll remember Fiona at 5 weeks old, she looked like this:



and at four months, she looks like this:




and may be the answer to why tissues haven't helped my allergies this season

(best to turn off the sound for the video. I was flipping through channels and stopped to get the video of the cruel attack, so who knows what that noise is)


And for those who wonder what Oscar does when he doesn't have a kitten swinging from his head, check out this blog!

The Story of Oscar

It was one of the first comfortable days back in late March of 2004, and my husband and I decided to go for a walk together. It was the first time we'd gone for a walk since I moved in the previous fall, and we had just set out, not more than fifty yards from our door when suddenly we heard tires screeching. Looking towards the large road by our house, we saw cars skidding to stop to avoid hitting a very wiggly buddle of energy that came careening across the road to us. I heard a voice in my head say "Oh, that's Oscar" - and it was! Soon I was being licked and wiggled against and wagged into by what felt like a warm and fuzzy brick - handsome spotty dog with a belt around his neck and no signs of identification. I looked at my husband and said "You knew who I was when you married me," he sighed and we turned back home, bringing the dog with us. One of the feral children on the street ran up to us and said "oh my gosh, that's a PIT BULL" in a shocked and excited tone. I replied quickly "oh, no, he's much too friendly. He must be a mix." Like most people I didn't really know what a pit bull looks like, and while I didn't believe that an animal could be inherently born evil, I didn't think pit bulls were naturally friendly, either.

Before long we'd had the dog tied to a tree (he couldn't come inside until I knew he was healthy and safe enough to be around my cats!) and we were inside making phone calls. He was obviously extremely friendly, and also obviously completely untrained. Manners were not something this dog had an excess of. Energy was, though. He would jump on anyone who came near him, able to knock them over with his enthusiasm. After a lengthy game of "if you jump, I'll back up, if you stand calmly, I'll come towards you" I got close enough to really look at him and found his tail was split open and bleeding. I know most animals are uncomfortable having strangers handle injuries, and fully expected growling or aggression as I tried to see how bad his injuries were, but I got none. The hardest part was keeping the tail still - it kept wagging so much! - but before long I had it cleaned and put neosporin on it, and had him doctored up.

Calls were made to every local shelter we could find, as well as the police. We posted signs in area pet stores, called businesses near the area he'd come from, and sent e-mails searching for his owners. None were found. I knew I couldn't just take him to the pound - he had way too much energy to be considered adoptable, and I suspected his lack of manner compounded with his breed meant he'd just be put to sleep before my car left the parking lot.
After two weeks of searching, a shelter about an hour from my home responded to an e-mail. They were in a different county, but had read my e-mail about this very sweet pit bull that didn't deserve to die but needed a home. The confessed that they had no room to take in a dog from a long distance, but said they knew how friendly and sweet pit bulls could be, and they were willing to put him in their system if I would be his "foster parent" - they just needed a name to put in the computer. And so it became official. Like that odd voice said when I first saw him, he was, in fact, Oscar. The shelter had us bring him in for a neuter, and said in a few days when the hormones left his system he'd be much calmer. That is apparently one of those lies they tell you, like childbirth is a "slight pinch". He wasn't calmer. Vets couldn't decide how old he was - some said six months, some said a year, we chose to split the difference and call him nine months old and chose the 4th of July as his birthday. He was deemed healthy enough to begin introducing him to the cats, so that was a big step. It soon became clear that he would bow to the cats in all their needs, and was no threat to them (though he is still to this day not allowed unsupervised with them if no one else is home).

We were his foster parents for about two months with no nibbles. I researched pit bulls until my eyes were sore, and learned how misunderstood the breed is (a sound pit bull will have basically no human aggression in nearly any situation, but will often have aggression towards dogs in particular, and animals in general) We went through a basic puppy course, where he learned things very, very quickly. I got my first taste of what would become a common response - Oscar walking up and being flirty and friendly with someone, them enjoying him immensely, asking what kind of dog he was, and then leaping away in horror to find they'd been kissed by one of those killer pit bulls. And then the calls came. Two within a week. The first was a woman with a toddler. I thought it might have worked, but just didn't feel like Oscar could be trusted not to knock the small child over (what I know now is that he's mind-bogglingly gentle with small children, and likely would have been a wonderful little nanny dog). The second call was a single man, about nineteen years old, looking for a pit bull specifically. Something didn't sit right. I may have been guilty of the same stereotyping Oscar deals with all the time, but I decided then and there Oscar wasn't leaving. We may not be the ideal home for a dog like him, but with me he would get love, and training, and safety.

And so it turns out that Oscar knew something on that very first rush across the highway, something I didn't know. He knew that he was already home.

In the past four years, I've faced a lot of battles no one should have to face. A lot of them have made me want to give up. But then this fuzzy warm brick crawls into my lap and licks me and wags his tail and plays with my cats, and gives me something else to fight for. Fighting for him allows me to fight for myself. Fighting for him has saved me. So even if he never completes his Search-and-Rescue training, I know that he's already a hero. My hero. My dog.














My Oscar.
Happy birthday, Doodle-bug! I love you!

From Neil Diamond to Tracy Turnblatt

All weekend I was singing Fee, you'll be a woman soooooon.... but this evening I got to start singing Fifi, you're a big girl now!

Today, one day before her three month birthday, Fiona went in for her spay, the rite of passage that makes her no more a little baby. She barely looks like one anymore anyway. I spent a lovely day Saturday with an old friend and several new ones, and brought along pictures of the whole crew. The two I selected of Fiona were taken just about three weeks apart but showed a striking growth in the little woman.

She's home now and groggy but recovering, despite very clearly needing and wanting some snuggle-with-Mom time when we first got home! She can still get under the door and therefore cannot be contained (without also keeping her from food, water, and a box) even though she's more than doubled in size since she came home (was 1.8 lb is now 4). The boys missed her today and barely knew what to do with themselves while she was gone. (well, Aslan knew, he did what he always does, which is contemplate the frustrations of there being other beings in his world). I've got a little barracade set up so that none of the boys can get into her space but she can get in and out easily, and she's spending time in there and occasionally coming out to make sure I haven't abandoned her yet.

Oscar says "het is over tijd"*!

(he already knows English and a little Scottish Gaelic - he's willing to learn Dutch for a good cause!)

Banning breeds doesn't reduce bites!


He also encourages you to check out this great site and video of a wonderful therapy dog!



(*he says that's Dutch for "It's about time!")

We all pitch in...

Over the years my extremely high quality home has developed water damage (that is to say that sarcasm isn't the only thing dripping around here). For a while I could pass it off as a security device, since only those invited in were allowed to know which areas had flooring underneath them, and which were magically levitating carpet. But with the rain this season, it became clear that if the weight of the dog was causing the carpet to pop through, I didn't stand much chance of making it out alive. So a large section of flooring by my front door has been removed (which happened one day while Oscar and I were at school and freaked us both out when we opened the door), rebuilt, puttied for smoothness (the kitten's footprint is one inch in size, for those wondering) and is being re-tiled right now.

Good times.

So there's been a lot of extra dust and grime and bugs and fun things around, and that means everyone has to do their part, as members of our family, to clean things up. Even wee Fiona has a job.


And for posterity's sake, Fiona, who looked like this at five weeks old,

looks like this at eleven weeks.

Definitely getting bigger. Her body is starting to change, too, face getting a little more angular instead of that generic baby roundness, starting to have actual long hair instead of just puff, starting to look like a little cat instead of a kitten! I don't think anyone else is interested really, but I'm enjoying watching her grow.

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

When I was asking a few friends about ways to make little Fiona's growth a positive and healthy one, what with her not being around cats except for the first hours of her life, I kept hearing was that she would learn quickly from Trevor and Aslan. This gave me high hopes. Trevor is very devoted and loving and has a great sense of humor, and Aslan is extremely loyal and dignified and wise and well-behaved. Still, I didn't really envision things quite right.

She seems to have mastered Aslan's .... um.... fuzziness?
And Trevor's sense of adventure.

(the poor dog was doing his required sit-stay while I prepare his food. The kitten is not very good at sit-stays, but is good at helping herself to someone else's food.)

(please note the dog walked in just a step before me, and wasn't actually boogy-ing down with the "Guilty Party" going on here)

(playing in the dog bed with one of her favorite toys - a small stuffed bulldog)

(the large hungry bulldog is unamused.)

And here, a wrestling match, complete with occasional (waggy) referee. Aslan was in the box seats, purring away behind me, probably enjoying that Trevor has someone else to play with now!

Becoming a cat

Another week of Fiona growing and she's getting bigger and stronger every day. I've had several kittens in my life (who all grew to happy, perfectly neurotic cats) but never started with one as young as Fiona (who came to me at six weeks) so its been fascinating to watch her progress from silly little escape artist into someone with cat-like qualities.

Yesterday she weaved in and out between my feet for the first time. It's a vaguely affectionate act (it's actually designed as feline marking, rubbing all the gland-points on the person's legs, so strange cats know whose person this is in case it gets lost) but she hadn't done it yet. Apparently that behavior develops at nine weeks!

Oscar is training her (really) not to go near the door. She enjoys playing with shoelaces, which tend to hand out by the front door, and she plays hard. So she'll be throwing her tiny body all around and thump into the door accidentally, and it sounds like a knock. And Oscar barks. And the kitten gets scared and runs away from the door. So now she hangs out by the front door slightly less. Conditioned response and all.

She's also becoming a little more vocal, probably learned from the great orator Trevor, who likes to narrate that he's walking down the hall, or especially to perform original compositions on the subject of "everyone else has gone to bed and I'm in the living room all aloooooone." Aslan is a talker, too, but he tends to only want to discuss things of importance, whereas Trevor is more a "shoot the breeze" kinda guy. We'll have to see how much of a gossip Fiona turns into.

So here's the weekly shot of her with the pompom toy at 9 weeks:


and here is how the dog bed you saw in last week's video is getting used all too often:


(here is how it should be used:

sometimes you have to stretch all the way out to get full benefit)

(pardon all the cords, I'm rearranging furniture, and there are cords everywhere)