Animals… We have 2 cats and a dog.

Spaz is the smart one. He is a huge, grey/black/brown, striped tabby, weighing in at 15lbs. He dares to step between the dog and her food, bone, treat, whatever; without without giving it a second thought - and WOULD win any fight between them. Though he does not come off as being aggressive, just "demands" his space/wants with his actions/attitude.
























To give an idea of the intelligence of this cat, we can ask him questions and he will answer us (if he feels like it). The biggest thing he has done is helped in retrieving cat #2. Whenever Wheezy has gone missing (from the very beginning), we would tell Spaz to bring him home, and he would. He would go retrieve the "prodigal" cat.



In the house we lived in before moving into our new home, the dog was never aloud inside. She was strictly an outdoor dog, but she also had full access to the stand alone garage. Spaz would saunter over to the dogs food bowel or water bowel whenever he felt like it, the dog would charge at him and he would just stand there. I think it kind of freaked out poor Paloma.



Since moving to our new home, Paloma has become an indoor dog and is quite enjoying it. She is a blond "Chug" (Chuaua/Pug). Being that Wheezy is EXTREMELY skittish… Wheezy is the stupid, little, wimpy one that startles if you breath wrong. He has long black fur with white boots in back and tips on the front. He is beautiful in his own way.



Wheezy (Wimpy) is terrified of the dog. In our old house, he would avoid Paloma at all costs. He never really had to pass the dog, but if the dog happened to be at the chain-link fence at the same time and she "charged" at the fence (50 feet away), Wheezy was outta there in a flash.
When we moved in to our new home back at the end of May, we had all 3 animals in the house. Paloma has a kennel that she sleeps in at the bottom of the stairs that she get locked in at night. The cats' litter boxes and food are upstairs away from the dog. We tried our best to make arrangements for comfort for them, too.
























Well, after a short time, Wheezy took off. I am not sure if the dog kept charging at him and torturing him or if he was just being a wimp, but he took off. We have a screened flap/pet door that the cats have been given access to the outside. I didn't really worry about Wheezy venturing past the dog at the bottom of the stairs and assumed he would just stay upstairs. I was worried sick. I was sure that the local wild life had eaten him for a snack. He was gone for over 2 weeks and at that point, I had decided he was dead.



I had kept asking Spaz where Wheezy was all this time, but was sure there was no retrieving him. Eventually one night, we look in the back yard and there is Wheezy. He was a little thin and dirty, but seemed OK. We went back into the same cycle again several more times, each time wheezy was gone, I would ask Spaz to bring him home.



Eventually I realized that Spaz would walk to the front door and meow when I asked him to bring Wheezy home. One of the occasions I actually opened the front door. He walks outside and to the front of the garage and plops down on his side and just lays there. I figured, he was just being too lazy to go out his window and he was taking the opportunity to get me to let him out the easy way.



It was a beautiful evening so I decided to follow him out to my bench by the front walk by the front of the garage to enjoy the view. As I get to the front of the garage, just around the corner, there is Wheezy. Spaz give me that look of, "I told you so."






















Presently, Spaz is in a bread pan/loaf shaped basket on the floor that I have for sorting mail, taking a snooze while The Little Man is playing tennis on the Wii. Paloma is outside because she was making me nuts and Wheezy? Who knows. Maybe he took off again. Maybe he is cowering somewhere in the house out of sight until it is my bed time and he insists on torturing me with his "affection". He will jump on my lap, come up to my face and head butt my CPAP mask off and then rub himself all over me. Why did I worry so much about finding this annoying little pest?