Face off

In our house, there's always some kind of face off going on. But these domestic clashes are not between me and my husband, thankfully. We manage to have a pretty serene house life, even though we're both stubborn, and tend toward a fieriness of character, to say the least.

No, in our house it's not the two-legged homo sapiens who cause the domestic strife, it's the non-sapiens ones on four legs -- or paws, to be more precise.

If it's not Magellan and Darwin having one of their dramatic, if perennial, battles-to-the-death against each other (Darwin's nose has many a mark of those scuffles), it's Rusty and Darwin having one of theirs. I think I've mentioned how, when we rescued Darwin as a six-month-old kitten, the rescuer told us that he was "nervous around dogs," and that she was concerned about his coming to live with our two mutts.

Well, she need not have worried one bit. That cat runs circles around the dogs, especially Geni, whom he thinks is his own personal toy. He likes to rub his head against her face, her ears, her neck, and she'll let him, looking martyred and put upon the entire time.

He's learned to be more wary of Rusty, because the old dog has, to his own regret because he gets severely chastised, pinned Darwin down a couple of times with his powerful, albeit elderly, cat-spine-breaking jaws. I still have some of the early anxiety that began when we first brought Darwin home that I'll arrive and find parts of cat strewn all over the cat-blood-stained apartment walls. Needless to say, I'm very grateful that such a Poe-esque nightmare has remained such.

Geni and Rusty get along famously, and Magellan (the smartest four-legged creature in this household) stays clear of both, only occasionally getting close enough, when the dogs are lying down for their increasingly longer naps, to sniff a paw or a tail and then scurry away, before the dogs notice.

But now we have yet another face off that has already had its first casualty. Now Darwin is at war with the squirrels. For the entire time we've been here, the squirrels have stayed away from the bird feeders and window sills. However, now that winter is fast approaching, and food must be scarcer or harder to get out there in the woods, they've discovered both.

There's always one pesky squirrel in the bunch, and that one is now the one who'll sit at the window sill, munching nervously away but not nervous enough to run away after she's determined that Darwin can't get at her through the glass.

She's also the one that likes to perch herself inside another window feeder, causing Darwin to lunge at her from the kitchen sink. This latest preference of the squirrel (and of Darwin) cost us our lovely Galileo thermometer (a long-ago present from my sister in law, which had survived several moves and Darwin's introduction to the house). My husband had moved the lovely glass thermometer away from the larger windowsill to the one above the sink, thinking it would be more protected there. Sadly, he recently arrived home to find it shattered into a gazillion pieces over the sink. Score zero for the homo sapiens, one for the squirrel and one for Darwin.

I've now cleared the larger windowsill and placed a stool there so Darwin can sit and glare at the pesky squirrel to his heart's content. He does chase her off, now and then, but she always comes back, something I think he appreciates. At least it keeps him, who tends to be very easily and quickly bored, entertained. And it makes for a good picture and post, too.