A Cat Nap

(Here is a photo of me on the couch although at the time of the cat-nap, I was 15 years older as shown above when the incident described below happened.)


At the time this story took place, Abby was around seven or eight months old and had been housetrained by then. However, once in a while, she had to go late at night. She knew how to awake me so there were no problems that night getting me to let her out. I let her out back, a fenced in area, so I didn’t have to watch her while she did her deed. In previous nights I let her out, Abby would lollygag around exploring every corner of the yard, sniffing any different or unusual smells. I would call her name, and unless I yelled at her, she’d ignore me and continue doing her thing. I can understand why she was so curious about the night activities because of all the animals criss-crossing our yard. I’ve seen snakes, frogs, raccoons, foxes, deer, opossums, hawks, owls, rabbits, cats and dogs in our yard at night. It’s a different universe out there as far as Abby was concerned who only had a whiff of it from whatever smells and odors were left over from the nighttime activities.

So, on this night, I knew this was going to take a while. Instead of sitting there waiting for Abby to finish her back yard inspection on, I decided to go sit on the living room couch which turned in to lying on the living room couch. Without realizing it, I was down for the count and slept solidly for about an hour. Waking me up was Abby’s plaintively crying at the back door. It was so pitiful. She was all alone in the dark on the back porch all by her babygirl self, a singularity alone in the universe. I let her in and we went back to sleep. I think that whenever I let her out at night again, she got out and right back in with no farting around like before. When I moved to NJ and my mom was the sole caretaker of Abby, Abby started her funny business again. Abby could push my mom around, and she knew it. It became like clockwork for Abby who would wake my mom up around 2am so she could view the nighttime visitors outside. Right now, there are some readers who are thinking ‘She may have had to really go.’ Trust me, she could hold it. One time she held it for 36 hours, but I’ll discuss that in another entry. She had unbelievable bladder control. When Abby woke up my mom, she was asserting a dominance which she had over not only other dogs but people as well.

But on that late night in the dark back porch, she was my tiny little angel all alone in the world showing her vulnerability.