Mandy and I bought an eight week-old puppy over 11 years ago and named her ‘Daria’ after a cartoon character on the then-popular show, Beavis and Butthead.  Daria is 3/4 German Shepherd and 1/4 Black Lab and looks mostly like a fat Shepherd.  She has led a good life which I think she has enjoyed and while she is slowing down and one of her hips has been failing her for years -- she is still getting along pretty well.

We adopted Cisquoe (a 2.5 year-old cat named after the goofy Gardening with Ciscoe guy) when Daria was about 7 years-old.  Cisquoe was a 13-14 pound cat when we adopted him and he has now ‘blossomed’ into about a 20-21 pound tub of fuzzy, stinky cat.  (We feed him light-kitty food... he just is lazy)  He can now no longer reach many parts of his mangy fur coat and he has developed some nasty skin tags or warts that he picks at.

The cat and dog managed pretty well when Cyrus was born, and we tolerated them too.  However, now that we are on a one-on-one defense against the kids and have little time for anything else - the pets have just become downright obnoxious (or subnoxious as Cyrus would say).  The dog now chooses to wander over to our neighbor’s nice vegetable garden and pooh on his lettuce.  She also, with care and precision, rips our trash can to shreds if we make the mistake of leaving her alone with it. 

The cat on the other hand has a little Siamese in him and therefore enjoys hearing his own voice... LOUDLY outside of Sage’s door when she is sleeping.    At night, Cisquoe sleeps in our bedroom because if we put him anywhere else he will either meow very loudly or bang a door to get our attention.  We don’t care so much that he sleeps with us, but lately he has taken it upon himself to vomit up hairballs in the middle of the night and wake us one more time beyond the two to three that Sage wakes up.  Now, when I say ‘vomit’ hairballs... I really should say it sounds like he is trying to push all of his internal organs out and instantly stains the carpet yellow-ish green.

In summary, we’re close to getting rid of them both.  I’ve been tempted to put them up on Craigslist.  We’ll probably hang on to Daria since she is so close to kicking the bucket, but I don’t know about that cat.  He may otherwise have to become an outdoor kitty and fend off those raccoons.  I bet he’d lose a few pounds!