Fatale Abstraction

She was home alone, bored and lonely. Why do they leave her to knock about this place by herself when she'd rather be loose and free as the wind, running to check out all the interesting odors with which the world is teeming and occasionally chase cottontails? How can the world keep turning without her there to micromanage it?

Sure, she's an old lady these days - 15 - that's about 75 in small dog years - but doesn't she still have needs? Doesn't she still have... desires?

So what if she does have to take several dollars' worth of supplements and glucosamine/chondroitin twice a day to keep the old hips working (too much jumping off refrigerators and the like as a young pup)? All those careful, dainty steps shouldn't lure one into thinking she's not still full of ginger. Yeah, she shivers all the time, but does that warrant the humiliating donning of dresses which her Mistress insists upon? We think not. We think the convention of clothing is beneath our kind and should be left to the trivial species. But I digress.

Her mistress has been baking cakes for all and sundry, and she's stood patiently by, never complaining about getting only occasional crumbs. She knew her day was coming.

Mistress sat Myron's cake, quad-wrapped in cello and taped into a tin on the coffee table, ready to sit down and bedazzle the tin. Distracted and tired on Friday night, Mistress never got around to bedazzling the cake tin and forgot about it.

So the cake sat there in all its rummy goodness, tantilizing fingers of cake scent wending their way through through tightly-wound layers of plastic and a very snug lid. "Come hither" whispered the fingers - "the glories of egg and sugar and rum and butter await inside-- it is useless to resist me."

Lo and verily did she hie and hither forth come, relishing the problem-solving challenge of removing the lid of a tin with no thumbs-- for what tin could be a match for such abiding desire?

When I got home and found the dog had been at Myron's cake (I'm making you another!), I was shocked (shocked!) to find my deaf/half-blind/geriatric doglet had made free to help herself to the cake. My 15 pound she-beast ate about a pound of a 4 pound rum-cake. That would be like a 200 pound man eating 30 pounds of rum cake - incredible!!! Anyway, I hope the old bitch is hung over!

Poor thing. It's funny to think what must go through a dog's mind. Anthropomorphism dictates we'll think dogs are vindictive (OK, Erin's wiener dog Uno IS vindictive, but he's smarter than most) and that they are ornery on purpose, but in fact, probably the closest dogs get to being human is a sheer befuddlement over the fact that we drag lots of lovely meat and other goodies back home to the cave and we don't gather 'round and dig into it all at once - what is wrong with us that we don't set to devouring all that lovely food immediately?

Once about 13 years ago I left a bag of groceries on the coffee table (same coffee table - HEY , mabye there's a connection!) and forgot about it, and a box of butter had been put in this non-cold bag and I didn't realize it. I came into the room to find she had eaten the entire pound of butter and there were little greasy-pukey butter-puddles all over the floor. Fortunately, I lived in a loft at the time and had concrete floors, but sheesh!

So, anyway, she sorta acted sheepish, but i just grabbed the camera and made her stand for photos with the carcass. After all, she's a killer - she should be proud!