Animal Control. Or Not.

Mia is the first dog my grand daughters will remember.

At three months and less than two pounds, I rather doubt she’ll reach the “up to 30 pounds” adult weight they were told to expect. Part Cocker (is there a miniature Cocker?) and part something else (Abby says Dachsund), Mia is a most self-possessed and fearless creature for her size, who, like most toddlers, has an amazingly short attention span and the need to have something in her mouth at all times.

She is also, of course, not house-broken. And when I took her out of the crate at first light, nature called.

Now I’ll have to tell you that Maggie the Cat and Mia the Dog have not made their peace, and the aggression (merely curiosity and wanting too much to be friends) is at Mia’s account. The cat hisses, the dog chases. And so it goes.

So it was not fortuitous that, just as I was coming up onto the back deck to come back in out of the cold wind and drizzle with dog following along behind me, Ann let’s the cat out the door we were headed toward.

Zoom goes the cat across the deck, down the steps, across the length of the yard, and right behind her zipping past me, the weeny dog, an elongated black blur in the dawn light.

The cat comes to and goes through the iron fence. The dog, likewise. The cat heads down the rocky overgrown canyon behind the house. The dog disappears in pursuit.

I should mention that this is the same rocky canyon where, on our last trip out, the cat encountered a three foot rattlesnake. I should also mention that, in order to chase the dog down into the snake pit, I’d have to leap up out of the yard onto a shoulder-high wall into the neighbors yard–an athletic impulse unbounded by gravity or orthopedics decades ago. But that was then…

In the end, dog captured, captor not snake bitten but winded and battered, his brief morning muse rounded up and sent to the pound for safe-keeping.

I’m getting the feeling that there will be more stories forthcoming. And some pictures. Stay tuned.