When my strong, intelligent and independent youngest daughter, Amy, called and asked my husband, smiling Dave and me to fly to Florida to take care of her, I knew there had to be a catch somewhere.  I understood she was about to have some serious knee surgery, but I also knew that she had experienced other surgeries and had never asked us to care for her.  However, I agreed and she purchased round trip tickets to Florida for us for a ten day stay.

We arrived a day before her surgery, and Amy, explained that she would not be able to put any weight on her leg for six weeks, thus she had lined up family members and friends to give her a hand during that time.  She quickly took us around her home, and it was then that I realized that we were there to take care of her seven-month-old puppy and her two cats, one orange and the other a dark gray.

Those who know me well know that I am not much of an animal lover.  I don’t judge others who want cats and dogs for pets, but I just never warmed up to those creatures.  When I read articles that tell me that as a very old senior citizen, my life would be enriched if I simply had a pet.  I think, I would rather have a toddler to look after, and I am not going to take on that responsibility either.  But I quickly saw the need for hubby and me to be the animal caretakers during the time that we were staying at Amy’s house.

First was the rambunctious puppy who had been trained by two women, so the dog responded to my voice, but not so much to smiling Dave.  Still because of my arthritis, I could not walk Finnegan five or six times a day, so the job fell to Dave.  I put an air-tag in Dave’s pocket and tracked him on my phone each time he took Finnegan for a walk.  The first two evenings in the dark, he and the puppy got lost.  I sent neighbors out to get them and the following day, Dave, Finnegan and I walked around the nearby neighborhood and marked out the houses because smiling Dave said that all the houses looked alike in the dark.  Fortunately, Amy had a large rock in her front yard, so Dave and Finnegan could easily find it, and know that they were home.  Dave explained that Finnegan walked him and mostly pulled him around the block.  Still, he seemed to really like the puppy and never complained about the walking chore.

That meant that I was in charge of feeding and watering the cats.  A simple task, until it came to emptying the litter pan and my queasy stomach did not relish that job one bit.  Still, I gritted my teeth and got it done.  I do not much like cats, and that one job made me decide that I would never keep one.  However, the two cats were well behaved for the first three days, and I thought taking care of them was a piece of cake.  I never actually saw the dark gray cat as she spent all her days under the coverlet on my daughter’s bed.  But the orange cat named Nori was a different story.

As soon as Nori saw that I could not control her, she began to act possessed.  Amy had the house gated off with the puppy in one part and the cats in another section.  Nori loved to tease the dog.  She would walk by the gate and slide her tail along the little posts.  Poor Finnigan would try to get her tail, and Nori would simply swish it in his face and walk away.  She could jump the gate, while the puppy had not figured it out, so all he could do was growl and glare at her in his frustration.

One night at about four in the morning, I awoke with something on the bed with me.  I turned on the light and found Nori curled up on the pillow by my head.  “Nori, you get right off this bed and out of my room,” I said in the sternest voice I could muster up at that time of night.

She slowly strolled off the bed and out of my room, and I shut the door on her.  About thirty minutes later, I heard someone knocking on my door.  Thinking that my daughter needed me, I opened the door to find that Nori was using her paw to knock on and jiggle the door.   “Get out of here and don’t come back,” I said, and to my delight she fled.  However, for the rest of the time that we were there, Nori would see me and hiss with the meanest expression that I have ever seen on any cat’s face.  I told her that I was in charge of her food, but she didn’t seem impressed by that and continued to hiss at me, even as I was lugging my suitcase out the door to go to the airport.

At home and settled back in a house that is pet free, my daughter texts me to say that Finnegan misses smiling Dave, but the cats seem to think that they are better off without me in their territory.  Trust me, I feel the same way.