Making Friends

When I decided to make the move to AR, I thought I had better bring my baby with me. Now don't get all aglow, my baby is my beautiful Maine Coon cat otherwise known as Taz as in the Tasmanian Devil which he certainly can be at times. I was a bit worried since I would be bringing him into a house with two dogs and another cat.

The dogs are beauties: first Gretzky, about 7

years old, a very beautiful Siberian Husky with one blue and one green eye. He is a gentle giant and will easily give you loves, if deserved, but will definitely protect my granddaughter and other household members if the occasion calls for it. In Colorado he just loved laying out in the snow... what little they usually got in the area where he lived. One time when I was in Colorado for a visit we decided to go skiing at the local area, Monarch Mountain and Kirk decided to bring Gretzky along. Talk about taking someone to his home, well Gretz just loved it. He rolled around in the snow and was most happy to be able to sit in the snow bank and watch the goings on. I'm a bit worried how he is going to get along down here with the humidity. But as he did in the summers in Colorado, we can get him his own small swimming pool and he'll be happy laying it that on some of the hot summer days.

Then there is the lap puppy called, Sackett. He is about a year old, just a puppy at heart, and a mix of German Shepard and Mastiff. He definitely thinks he's the king of the hill and tries to show off all the time. But he is lovable and will be a gentle little guy as long as you rub his ears. Of course, once you do it, he thinks it's his responsibility to come by you all the time and make his ears available for petting. He is so darn cute you just can't resist when he comes looking at you with his sad, brown eyes. Yeah, I know you can't see them in this picture. I've always had a problem taking pictures of animals cause their eyes always come out looking like this. One day I with check with my photo guru, Judi or Farida, and see what I'm doing wrong.

There is also another dog in this family but she is currently in the St. Louis area with my son at his job site. Jade is about 9 years old, a black Lab, and is getting up there with some problems with her hips. I understand this is a common problem with Labs.

It seems the two cats, Taz and Stasia's cat, Shadow, didn't have any trouble bonding. Yeah, they hissed at each other a couple of times but that was gone within a day or so. They easily eat and drink out of each other's feeders and use each other's potty box... altho that's kind of changed now and they are respecting each other's privacy.

My biggest concern was how Taz would react and interact with the dogs. Taz has a dog buddy in CA... Skipper. Skipper is a small poodle who probably weighs less than Taz. They would always run around with each other and play. When Taz got tired or Skipper got too rambunctious, Taz would simply run away or run to his cat play house which was too high for Skipper to get to. But here, it's a bit different.

However, over time Taz and Sackett have gotten to be friends. At first it was a bit iffy (picture on left) with each of them scoping the other out. But now, after a couple of weeks, they seem to be working together and don't have a problem with each other.

They seems to respect each other and neither runs away from the other when they are near. Now all I have to do is make sure Sackett doesn't eat the cat food... seems he's taken a liken to it.

But it's nice to know most all the animals have made friends with each other.