Sunday, August 10, 2008

Bella and the kitten


Here's a picture my wife, Marci, took that I think is a hoot.



Look closely and you'll notice a couple of things. First of all, you'll see part of Marci's knee captured in the photo. I could have cropped it out, but what's the fun in that? Second, you'll see that our living room carpet needs to have a vacuum cleaner run over it. We had in-laws at the house all weekend, so we can't really be blamed for that.

Third, you'll notice Bella the dog interacting with a kitten. Why is that significant? Our powerful, three-legged dog (she was born that way) has been terribly afraid of the kittens until just today. She could swallow them in one bite, but the dog has actually run from the kittens since we brought them out of the intense heat and into the house a couple of weeks ago.

The kittens, by the way, are four weeks old and are the same ones that prompted me to dream up a brilliant marketing plan for not long ago (in short, I wanted to give a free case of beer away with every kitten). We originally had five kittens, but three of them died due to some terrible problems with an umbilical cord I won't get into right now.

At any rate, I'm glad our dachshund/black lab mix has gotten over her fear of kittens. Good for Bella!

10 comments:

The Mad Dog said...

Congrats on the kittens and the blog award!

Unknown said...

I'm sorry, but I still can't get my head around how Bella came to be in the first-place. I mean, come on, a Dachshund/Black Lab mix??? Was it a matter of a really long-legged Dachshund or a really short-legged Lab??? Then again, maybe some Divine intervention was at work just to mess with my head...

Claire said...

What a cutie! Our dogs always took a while to get associated with new kittens but within about 6 months the kitten had the dog totally whipped! Eating out of the dogs bowl while the dog just sat back wondering if someone had secretly neutered him!
Nice blog!

HawgWyld said...

the mad celt:

Thanks! Not too thrilled about a couple of kittens running loose in my house, however.

I'm more of a dog fan...

HawgWyld said...

fishhawk:

I'd argue that mix doesn't work too well. Bella does have a gimpy leg, after all.

Fortunately, she's got those big ol' lab paws to stabilize her.

HawgWyld said...

koen & claire:

Thanks! Things work a little differently around my home in that the dogs tend to run the place. There's one cat that doesn't get along with the dogs and she winds up getting chased a lot.

By the way, there are few things funnier than a three-legged dog flying down the hall after a cat.

That's comedy...

Jessica said...

Aw, cute! I'm glad they are getting along. :)
We adopted a huge mutt(Buddy), and at first he was scared of the cats, but after awhile we had to keep them separated because it seemed his fear had turned into hunger!

HawgWyld said...

Jessica:

I can only hope Bella's fear doesn't turn to hunger! But one never can tell with that dog -- she's fattened up quite a bit since my wife took pity on her and adopted her from a local animal shelter.

She'll eat about anything she can get her mouth on. Hopefully, she won't start feasting on kittens before we can find homes for the little darlings.

I figure that little calico in the picture will be easy to give away...

JD at I Do Things said...

Bella! I love you! What a sweetheart. I believe Cute Overload refers to this as "interspecies snorgling."

JD at I Do Things

HawgWyld said...

JD:

Yes, Bella is a stout-hearted adventurer! It took some courage to get over her crippling fear of kittens.

Ah, the brave, three-legged dog...