Papa Geoff

Papa Geoff,
OK, not the most spiritual blog update but this is kind of funny. We’ve got a dog and a cat. Tony, “the animal lover” Vanaria’s idea of course. The dog is a mix of German Shepherd and Blue Heeler. His name is Geoff. “Geoff with a G”. He’s large, pleasant, affectionate and could definitely write one of the “dog diary” entries where he records every activity of the day followed by the words, “My favorite thing!”. He’s cheerful and enthusiastic.
Sally is a small tabby who just had her first litter. She first played with Geoff when he was a small puppy, about 20 kilos ago and they still play together constantly. She’s not gained any weight and he’s about five times larger than he was before. They still play the same way they did the day we brought Geoff home. He chases her around, sleeps with a paw over her back, and eats from the same bowl as Sally. It is not uncommon for her to have hair sticking up like a stylist had applied gel to it in order to create a punk look. The cause: Geoff has been licking Sally again. They would be the picture perfect family is they were the same species.
Given their relationship, it was not a surprise that Geoff felt like a proud papa when Sally had her litter. He would go in the bedroom and lie down staring at the kittens for long periods of time. Within a couple of days he began licking the kittens and Sally just sat there while he did this. Then he began to play a new game: hide and seek.
When the kittens were about five days old we came home and couldn’t find them. We found an empty cardboard box, a sleeping Sally and a happy Geoff. We reasoned the kittens couldn’t have gotten far on their own but we hadn’t figured out what the cause was. Eventually we found all the kittens, who were rather large eyed and traumatized. They had been stashed in various places around the room. It appears that Geoff created a new version of hide and seek. He had been picking up the kittens in his mouth, depositing them in various hiding spots around the room and waiting to see if they would come and find him. The kittens seemed unaware of their role and were wet with slobber and rather limp to the touch. I think it was shock. All this was going on while their mother sat and watched, licking her paws and occasionally grooming one of the untouched kittens. Eventually, we had to lock Geoff out of the bedroom because we couldn’t trust him to leave the kittens where they were supposed to be.
While it’s not knock-down hilarious, it was pretty funny. There’s a lot of little joys like this in the course of a day and as these two extra members of our household provide a lot of humor we thought we’d share it with you all. Till next time!