BLOG: TAIL TALK

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[My husband and I have a way with words that's fun for us but makes everyone around us wonder what the heck is going on in our world. Our latest kitty kid likes to sit at the top of my recliner, which also happens to be a rocker, so if I'm not careful when I get out of the chair I send her flying across the room. Tim's warning to let me know of impending cat doom is to holler out "catapult, catapult" while everyone else sits and looks at him like he's nuts. But I know, and I guess that's the important thing. I've only sent the cat flying across the room a couple of times and so far she's no worse for wear, so we're good. That doesn't get us into trouble like our code name for our blood pressure medication. For some reason Tim started referring to it as his "heartworm" medicine, and I picked up on it and have gotten so used to the terminology that I can no longer think in terms of blood pressure, even when I am at the doctor's office and have to try to speak intelligently about my medical conditions. However, the defining moment was when we were in Northern Indiana visiting his mother and he suddenly remembered he'd forgotten to bring his medicine with him. I don't know what was funnier, the look of shock on his mom's face when she exclaimed "you don't have heartworms, do you?" or her expression when he responded "of course not, I take medicine for it." Yes, sometimes we forget ourselves. We have multiple names for each of our pets because the names evolve. Take Happy Jack for example. No one ever knows who I'm talking about because when we brought him home from the high kill shelter we named him Happy Jack because he was so happy to be out of the shelter he pooped in the van on his way home. Then his name evolved into Action Jackson because of the speed with which he ran through the house. That stuck for a while until we started calling him puppy, because he was compared to our older animals, then we started talking about his cute little puppy toes, and the name Puppito came about. Then we started calling him Pete. So 50% of the time we refer to him as Jack and the other 50% of the time we call him Pete, but it's the same dog. Everyone thinks we have more animals in the house than we have, and when you have as many as we do that's quite an impressive number. We do the same thing with the cats. Donald was originally Don Cato, but now he's Donald but with a lot of different pronunciations, like Donowd, it just depends on the occasion. So you just never know what we're talking about when you come to our home. But somehow all the animals and the people involved understand each other and know who is speaking to who and when. The cats know their names and come when their called, and most of the time the dogs do too. When they don't it's by choice and not because they don't know any better. And don't let any dog or cat pull the wool over your eyes into thinking otherwise. They're smart animals and know a lot more than they let on. The really smart ones have us at their beck and call. And if you don't have any really smart animals in your life, well you don't know what you're missing out on. Life just doesn't get any better than spending an evening at home with your loved ones, the furry ones and the less furry ones. It just don't get any better than this. So if you're missing out you too can have it, just go to your local shelter and adopt. Not just one but two or three. And never forget, it's only through you that the Randolph County Humane Society continues to save lives one by one.