The Incident

I am forever glad that I have turned Dalton over to my "evil ways", as Chris likes to call it. Dalton loves animals every bit as much as I do, and I do need him on my side because Chris isn't too crazy about them all. However, sometimes Dalton takes his love a little too far...

We were pet sitting for a friend last week. Her kitty is sixteen years old or so, she has no teeth, and was sick with an upper respiratory infection. She needed antibiotics several times a day, and it was more feasible for us to keep Clara here to medicate her rather than me go to her house all the time. So one Friday night, she comes to stay with us for a week. Clara's mom brought over a HUGE crate for her, along with her litter box, and blankets and a bed and all that good stuff.

When she first came in, we set her up in the garage. We have three dogs and four cats of our own, all in the house, along with two additional kitties that I'm fostering. We all figured it would be less stressful on Clara if she were in the garage. On Sunday, we decided to move her into the house as it was supposed to get very very very cold, and that wouldn't be good for her as she was already sick. After much debate on where to put her crate, we decided on putting it in Dalton's room. The kids rooms are the only two rooms that our cats don't go into, so we figured it would be less stressful for her. I figured I would see how it went with Dalton...he has a habit of opening the crates and letting the animals out, which is fine, but I didn't want our animals to pick on the new kid in town.

All went fine...until one night. Dalton typically gets up once a night crying (night terrors?? not sure). It's about 2:30 in the morning and I hear him start crying. So I get up and go into his room. It's dark (we had another "incident" with the fish, and he died, so the fish tank light wasn't on...but I digress) and I feel around in his bed but he's not there. I feel around the top bunk, and he's not there either. So I'm trying to find him...I know he's in there, I can hear him wailing more and more loudly now, but I just can't seem to find him. So I turn on the light...

Dalton is in the cat's crate. With the cat. And somehow managed to lock himself in there. That's not the best part...just wait!! He's completely disoriented. And then I see it. Before Dalton fell asleep in the crate with the cat and locking himself in there, he decided to dump the cat litter box...half in the crate...half on the carpet. He also felt the need to dump the cat's water dish...and food bowl. So here's Dalton, laying in this crate (with poor Clara curled in his lap sound asleep) in the midst of half a box of cat litter and water and food. Oh, and let's also notice Dalton's pillow in the crate too, because, you know, logically, you can't sleep without a pillow!!!

At this point he's just so upset, and dirty, and it's still 2:30 in the morning, so I pull him out of there, change his pajamas, wash his face, and settle him into bed, where he promptly falls fast asleep. I don't want to wake the whole house by turning on the vacuum cleaner, so left it for the next morning. And of course, poor Clara had to potty during the night, so she went...in the litter remaining in her crate, which was, of course, on top of her bedding. Screw the vacuum...I pulled in the shop vac and just vacuumed the whole mess up. Then spent a while washing all her bedding and moving her to our bedroom.

So, as for Dalton's punishment, he wasn't allowed to watch any cartoons, and he wasn't allowed to play his Computer Cool School...which is educational, but it's fun none-the-less, so it was off limits. And this type of punishment really just punishes us, so of course he then proceeded to get into more stuff through the day and thoroughly bug the living day lights out of me all day!

Looking back at it now, I wish that I had taken pictures of it, because sometime down the road, we'll be telling him about this and he won't believe it. But I was so irate at the time, I just couldn't do anything but clean it up while seething with anger and disgustment!

So, last week, I was a bad mom, a bad pet sitter, just all around bad, bad, bad. I guess it's just all in a day's life as me...