Seeking the spotlight

Most cats are happy to be invisible to Sophie.But this one lives with a great Dane and a Lab.
He or she wasn't about to be ignored.
"Yo, Poodle."
Invisibility ain't all it's cracked up to be.

I spy

But Sophie doesn't.
Wow, talk about super-fabulous weather! Warm and sunny all week, and reportedly this trend will continue, thanks to La Niña. Really, I should be concerned about our declining snowpack (Denver's main source of water), but it's hard to complain about such nice days.

Sophie's due to get her winter coat removed in a couple of weeks. We'll probably have a deep freeze and three feet of snow the next day. Meanwhile, we're out walking and seeing what we can see. Or in Sophie's case, smelling what she can smell.

And as I've noted, the bees are out, too:
I hope spring comes soon for you, too!

Still oblivious

Oblivious

This is starting to become a bad habit.

"Stop right there, Sophie."

"OK, why?"

"Oh, no reason. Just wanted to snap your picture."

"Sigh."

Mom saw my post about mocking my old dog on the Internet and said she was drawing up a contract with Sophie's help. When Mom is deaf, half-blind and wobbly, I am not allowed to post photos of her or mock her frailties.

Gee, Mom, where's the fun in that?

Two perspectives

Hell has Cerberus, the groomer has Buster.

Insult to injury

It's bad enough that my old dog is deaf and half-blind and wobbly. But then I have to keep pointing the dreaded camera at her. In probably 95 percent of the pictures I take of her, she is refusing to look at the camera. It might flash, Dog forbid.
Little does she know I'm taking pictures so I can point out her failings on the Internet.
Poor thing.

Another invisible cat

You probably can't see it either. Here, let me zoom in:
I try to stay observant on our walks, and carrying a camera helps me record some of the interesting stuff I see. I look back though my photos and think, "Oh yeah! I forgot about that!"

I've found that as I get older, making a mental note isn't always effective. I remember that I wanted to remember something, but what it was, I can't recall.

Cat? What cat?

Sophie and I used to share a house with a three-legged cat named Hobbes. There were a lot of jokes about what happened to Hobbes' fourth leg ("We ate it." "It's in a reliquary at the Vatican." "We donated it to a two-legged cat"). The truth is he was hit by a car as a kitten. Didn't slow him down, happily.

Sophie learned quickly that Hobbes was not fair game for chasing, though she would lick his face in an attempt to get him to run. When he got tired of that, he would retreat to the basement where she wasn't allowed.

Then Doogie came along, and he hated cats. Sophie picked up from him that felines must be chased at all costs. After Doogie died, she had to unlearn her bad behavior with some help from the Voice of Doom. She still lunges if she sees a cat, but a sharp "Leave it!" from me pulls her up short. Friendly cats will even get a suspicious sniff (and I get an accusing look of betrayal).

Most of the time now, though, she doesn't see cats at all. As long as they don't move, she's clueless.

I hope my next poodle is as easy to teach that Kitties Are Our Friends.