About a month ago, I told Steve I noticed a flea problem, and he - as usual - brought home chickens. Yep. That's the solution. (It really isn't...he just waits for a way to get poultry into our backyard...this isn't the first chicken solution he's sold me.) In any case, there are chickens. About two weeks later, Mary runs into the house and blasts me with twenty sentences about an injured dog in the neighbor's backyard (the house is vacant...for rent; wanna be neighbors?). I yell, "Don't touch it!" I could only picture a hurt dog biting off Mary's arm when she gets all St Francis on it. I scoot out the back door, and Ana is carrying a very small dog, a Yorkie mix. She plops it down on our sun porch - it cannot walk on one leg. The chorus of "Can we keep him" begins, and I looked down at the mutt thinking, "more fleas...get the chickens on this stat." That night, Blue, our 12 year-old 100 pound coon hound, who hasn't moved past her food bowl in years, runs away. She runs away - to the country club. I am not kidding. The dog went a half-mile away, to the fanciest house in Portland. I can hear the dog muttering the entire way: "First they pull a cat out of an engine; then they bring in more birds, and now they plop this three-legged freak on my dog bed...I've got fleas, and I'm too fat to reach the itch...." And she ran off to find a wealthy family who gave her a bowl of food under a palm tree. (Seriously, we picked her up under a palm tree...she had IAMS, a definite upgrade from her Pedigree chicken flavor.) A few days pass, and the three-legged dog (whose picture we plastered all over the place - LOST DOG...LOST DOG...seriously, come get this LOST DOG!) starts attacking the chickens. It was a massacre: chickens flattened; children aghast, and three-legged dog proud to have provided a service of chicken elimination. We have had more chicken funerals than Perdue. Fast forward a few more days, and Little Kitty (the kitty from the engine, you'll recall) starts twitching next to her litter box. Water comes flying out of her rear end. I cup my hand over my mouth...I struggle to call out, "Annnnnaaaaa! Something is going on with your cattttttttt." All the kids come running, and little kitty gives birth to a littler kitty. Yep. She had just one kitty. We hadn't gotten her fixed because Steve told the kids she could have one litter. We were going to plan it and have a nice little "birthing" experience with an itty bitty kitty nursery and warm towels and blah blah blah blah BLAH. Uh. There it was. The three legged dog came rolling around the bend ready to pounce; Blue, the coon hound, rolled her eyes and called up the country club; the chickens complained about the flea situation, and Spray Cat - yep - he is still here - lifted his tail and soaked Little Kitty's food bowl. I think I could hear him say, "Tramp."
Um. So, the moral of all this is just buy Frontline.
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