Snow Days, Indoor Days...

I woke up in the wee hours of the night with a sore throat. I am optimistically thinking it is due to spending too much time outdoors in the wind yesterday, and that it's not an infection, because I do not want to go to a doctor and I do not want antibiotics. I figured out...it's been about 15+ years since I was on antibiotics. Maybe more...I actually can't recall being on any here or in Oklahoma...maybe the last time was in Michigan?

Anyway, I got up at 4:30 am and made myself a cup of tea. That disrupted three cats and one large dog, and they all thought it was dawn and that they should be fed. And let out. And let in. And by then I was quite wide awake.

The problem with having outdoor pets save but a smattering of über cold or über hot days each year is that they don't have any idea what the indoor rules are, the rare occasions they get to have an indoor sleepover with us humans.

Case in point:

It is not worthwhile to lick lick lick an empty cat dish clear across a hardwood floor in the hopes that some more catfood will magically appear in it.

It is not worthwhile to jump on the humans' bed and press cat paws onto the humans' sleeping eyelids.

Ditto jumping onto the humans' bed and biting the humans' earlobes.

Large dogs should not feel the need to whine every time the heater kicks on. Is she warning us of impending carbon monoxide poisoning? (Doubtful, given the merits of our storm window situation...) Is she warning us of impending propane explosion? (Doubtful, but one starts to give it consideration after the 20th whine cycle.) Is she just being an idiot dog? No doubt.

Outdoor cats should not assume that the one geriatric and permanent indoor feline wants to share sleeping stations.

Geriatric and permanent indoor felines should never yowl like a devil-cat in the middle of the night. I don't care how many outdoor cats want to snuggle and get warm. It's one thing to be awakened by a cat fight outdoors in the middle of the night; it is most unsettling to be awakened with a puma-sounding howl indoors and at the foot of one's bed.

It was -5º when I got up this morning. Ponies were happy to be in their stalls, but excited to get out into the sun and into their hay bale, too. Large outdoor dog wants nothing to do with being indoors this morning: she is tucked into a tight ball, in the snow and in the sun, in the middle of our yard. Hey, if the Iditarod dogs can do it, so can she, apparently.

The cats that deemed 4:30 am as playtime/wartime? All three asleep in their separate sunbeams...