Fragments From Floyd

I tried to ignore him, and successfully tuned him out while I typed a couple of paragraphs. But the half-plaintive, have threatening whine-growl meant "you get yosef over here right NOW"! Tsuga stood perched at the precipice between obedience and defiance, almost but not quite into the forbidden room with carpet where he must never (well, hardly ever) go.

"What is your problem?" I asked. He'd been fed, had his second-course rawhide chew, been out for his nature calls, and back inside already. But he still was obviously missing something necessary and urgent, and I was the chosen minion to serve his needs.

It occurred to me that, even though it was only 6 in the morning, he wanted to play. His favorite toy (and also his security blanket equivalent) is the fifth in the line of soft toys forever referred to as his "tiger monkey", named from the first oddly colored chimera of a squeekytoy. I remembered that he had last offered it to me just before I dozed off last night, placing its moist form in my face. I had indignantly tossed it on the floor.

"Go get your tiger-monkey" I told him. He immediately looks me square in the eye, as if asking for more information. "It's in there by your puppy bed" I told him, knowing it wasn't exactly by his bed, but at the head of our bed on the floor.

He set off around the table, as if he didn't quite trust my memory. It wasn't under the table. He took the bathroom entry into our bedroom. You could hear his claws ticking on the wooden floor: first a dead end, then back around the bed at a slow pace; then the steps quickened, up the bathroom step and out into the front room where I sat waiting--tiger-monkey proudly in his mouth.

I don't think our children were that smart at 18 months.