Pickles & Dimes

Shorty sleeps in a crate at night. He has a fleece blanket that he noisily noses into elaborate blanket and pillow configurations and uses to safeguard his Nylabone from the cats. Jason removed the blanket one rainy afternoon and placed it on top of the crate while Shorty was in there drying off, and came back 10 minutes later to discover he had pulled his blanket through the top of the crate and was sitting on the tiny corner he had managed to pull to the floor.

In the mornings, Shorty used to feign sleep when we’d come to take him outside, offering overly dramatic sighs and snores to prove that he was asleep, seriously, and coming out only when we brought him a piece of hot dog.

But then we started letting him hop on the bed with one of us for 5 minutes in the mornings while the other fed the cats. This arrangement was highly satisfactory to Shorty because he is the world’s #1 snuggler. As a result, we’d routinely go to his crate to find him sitting upright, waiting. You could tell it was the highlight of his morning.

And now, he’s even happier. Because Sunny has rolled back her early-morning annoyances by a good half hour. So at 5:45, we’ve been treated to her purposely clumsy attempts to procure food by meowing, pawing open the liquor cabinet, running over our heads, pawing at the dresser pulls, and doing what Jason calls the “shock paddle” manuever: jumping up on the headboard, taking a leap, and landing on all four paws squarely in the middle of his chest.

While my new job requires me to get up an hour earlier, I do not need to be awake at 5:45. So Jason started bringing Shorty into bed with us then and taking him outside around 6:20, when my alarm goes off.

And it is the best plan ever. Sunny stops hopping all over everything (because Shorty likes to invade her personal space at every opportunity, which she objects to for some crazy reason), Jason and I sleep like the dead, and Shorty is in heaven.

He’s also a blanket hog, and I have to literally open his crate and sprint back to the bedroom before he hops up or else I am stuck trying to pull my blankets from under his 48 lbs. of fake-snoring bulk.

At 5:45, without glasses or contacts, and feeling like I’m about to barf from being awake, it’s not the optimal time for me to be running around a dark house.

Which is why this morning I stubbed my toe on the corner of the wall and Shorty beat me to bed.

But at least Sunny was quiet, so I call that a WIN.