Jay-Z and the Cactus of Doom

January 12, 2015—All seven of our animals (excluding Spunk the hamster) are roughly the same general height and shape, with weights ranging from Jay-Z’s lean-bodied six pounds to our eldest dog Abby’s eighteen. That being said, there seems to be a familiarity developing between the newcomers and the old guard.

Previously, while not being chummy by any means, the dogs and cats tolerated each other and generally avoided each other’s space, with the exception that none of the others really cared for Calvin the Terrible. But with Calvin spending a good chunk of each day outside wreaking havoc around the neighborhood, the inside of the house was largely quiet. The dogs would turn out a vicious battle every other year or so, with the sisters, Lizzie and Mia, taking on the elder Abby when the senior petsfly members were out of town for an extended period of time (Abby would get stressed when we were away for too long and the puppies would unknowingly set her off).

Today, Calvin took a field trip to Kennel Care to see the always groovy Dr. Lind for dental work (a cleaning and two tooth extractions). He wasn’t particularly missed by the other pets, but since his return home, his soft-sided carry case was turned into a major source of curiosity between the dynamic duo. Soon after Calvin was released and the empty case stood on the living room floor, our Beyonce, as always, jumped right in through the zip flap on top, and spent an inordinate amount of time sniffing, inspecting, and rolling around the inside. Jay-Z, impatient for his turn, tried his best, through jumping, pawing, and being a general nuisance, to get his sister to vacate the case in order for him to have his turn. When Jay-Z did get his turn inside the case, Beyonce went off to do her own thing and put him on ignore. The second that he jumped out, however, she made an unhurried beeline right back inside the case. They took three turns apiece, with each time successively mirroring the first. She jumped in and he cared. He jumped in, and she was aloof. I think that they were glad for the afternoon source of amusement.

The really noticeable thing was the interest that Abby took in watching them. The elder pooch actually approached the carry case while the kittens were taking their turns playing inside, and crept to within just a couple of feet before sitting down and observing the goings on. Naturally, she growled when it looked like one of the youngers was about to invade her space, but she did so with her little stump of a tail in a semi-wag.

Dorkenheimer strikes! It turned out that the connection between Jay-Z and the cactus was a real one, and I wish that we had caught this one on video, as it would have easily netted us the $10,000 prize on the TV show.

With the household finally settling back down after the adventure of the carry case, our hero decided to jump back onto the cactus table. Youngest son Quinton had previously bagged the remains of the previously broken cactus pot, with the soil in one plastic grocery bag and the cactus in another. Apparently, Jay-Z could not ignore the allure of the bag with the soil in it. The clues led us to believe that the bag that he was inspecting seemingly grabbed Jay-Z and locked its carry handles around his lean body. He panicked, leapt to the floor from the table with the bag locked around his midsection. From there it was a black freaked-out blur of fur streaking from room to room, with the attached bag banging into walls and furniture alike, and leaked soil trailing the cat everywhere he went. He thought that he could outrun the attached bag, and watching him at top speed, while annoying as hell, was fairly impressive. It was also funny as hell, until we realized that the soil spread throughout the house wasn’t going to clean itself up.

After cornering the Feline Flash and extracting the tattered remains of the bag from around his waist, I sprinted for the laptop, claiming that the scene needed to be recorded online while still fresh in my mind, leaving Jeni to retrieve the broom and dustpan for the process of cleaning up. Needless to say, she wasn’t happy. Meanwhile, Beyonce set up shop inside the carrier again, looking as innocent as a newborn babe.