Puppy Makes a Big Mistake. Calamity!

Okay, maybe not calamity, but deep disappointment.

Wakea is my sweetheart's dog. He is a four year-old Coton de Tulear, and without a doubt has the sweetest nature of any dog I've ever met.

But we got off to a rough start, and after a solid two years of establishing our relationship, obedience and housebreaking, it seemed like we had finally gone beyond all the drama and settled into a normal, happy household with cat and dog.

When May first brought Wakea over, he was 2-1/2 years old and not housebroken. He still used the puppy pads to do his business, but he fequently missed, especially when he pooped. I couldn't stand the stench when I came home. It was like an open sewer. May was used to it and had a hard time understanding my frustration. It became a real point of contention in our relationship. To make matters worse, Wakea's breed is notoriously difficult to housebreak and at his age it was going to be an uphill battle. But after a lot of drama with my dearest, I finally got her to agree to crate training.

It took a solid year, but we finally achieved success. I even broke down the crate and put it away. It was great!

Until the wee hours of this morning, that is.

Here's how it all breaks down:

Over the weekend we went to May's condo to visit her sister's new Havanese puppy, Lucy. Wakea grew up in that condo and had peed repeatedly on the rug. Within an hour of being there he peed on it. Ah, nothing like old times, aye boy?

At the time I didn't really think that one event would break all our training, but it did. It just took a day because he was so exhausted after wrastling non-stop with the fiesty 2 lb bottomless pit of energy that is Lucy that he slept through the night no problem.

The next day, we went about our business as usual, coming and going throughout the day with no issues. That night, at about 5am, May woke up with a start.

"I smell pee," she said.

I told her she was probably imagining things, but she was certain. She turned on the light to investigate. Sadly, May's nose was its usual flawless self. No more than a foot from Wakea's bed was a small yellow stain on the carpet. From the smell we knew it was Wawa and not the Demon Cat, aka Battle Cat, aka Gabriel.

My heart sank. May was mortified.

I wasn't angry, although I wanted to be. I was disappointed and heartbroken. After all that time and work he had never peed on the bedroom carpet (Puke, sure, but not pee!). He snuck it over on us by reverting to an old habit of going to pee at 3-4am. We were both shocked at how easily he reverted to old bad habits.

We spent the next hour soaking up the pee and blasting it with enzyme cleaners, deodorants and so on. Wakea spent the rest of the night in the bathroom.

Sadly, now that he peed on the carpet, we will probably never be able to let him have free rein in the bedroom at night again. That makes both May and I very very sad. It feels like a tremendous failure for us. It will take a very, very, VERY long time for me to even think about trusting him outside the crate.

So now what? Well, it's back to the crate for Wa-wa. That means we have to lug it from the bedroom to the kitchen and back every day. We have to listen to him whimper and whine (he doesn't like to be confined). I figure that in 3-6 months we'll let him have run of the house (it's all hardwoods), but it is unlikely he will ever have the freedom in the bedroom he once had.

So sad. :(

Battle Cat Strikes Again

Last week I had to travel to Victoria to deliver a training over Halloween. The training went well and I came home on Thursday.

May picked me up at the airport at South Lake Union and homecoming involved the usual greeting from white fluffy Wakea bouncing up and down. Moments later, on queue Gabe appeared sitting pretty on the kitchen floor. I scooped him up and as usual he started to purr.

"He has some sap stuck on his paw," May said, poking gingerly at his left paw.

I looked. "That's not sap. It looks like blood." I pushed the fur aside and looked down into the raw red meat and sinew of his paw.

May went pale.

Surprisingly, Gabe seemed unbothered by the wound. He already cleaned it and was not in any obvious pain. Luckily, it was still mid-afternoon.

I called the Cat Clinic of Seattle and we rushed him down there. There the excellent staff took good care of him. He went in for surgery that night and came home the next day with several stitches in his left paw and wearing a cone. The cone is quickly becoming Gabe's trademark.

Sigh...Gabriel. That cat! To everyone Gabe deems to grace his presence with he is a lover not a fighter. But once he gets outside, he is a territorial brawler. An enforcer of the Russian mafia masked by a cute, gray fur covered facade.

Sad to say, he frequently comes off on the bad end of those conflicts. Two years ago it was a huge gash on his left thigh. Last year an infected puncture wound. And now this. Gabe, my sweet lovable lap cat (where he is right now), has added yet another nickname to the litany of others: Battle Cat.

For the first 4-1/2 years of his life Gabe was a purely indoor cat. I lived in a top-floor apartment on one of the busiest streets in Fremont. There was no way he was going to be an outdoor cat in that environment. My current home gives Gabe a good buffer from the busy streets nearby, so he has realized his lifelong dream of going outside (at least during daylight hours).

I am told that cats who start off indoor-only are often very territorial and Gabe appears to be a perfect manifestation of that assertion. He is so much happier going outside. But this is his third go around with the cone.

I'm torn between keeping him safe and indoors, but clearly not happy, and letting him outdoors where his is obviously happy but at risk of injury or worse mostly due to his own aggressive defense of territory. He cries at the door all day long in long plaintive mewling or polysyllabic mews and chirps. He stares at me or May and every time we go to the kitchen he runs full speed (quite a sight in the cone) expectant that the back door will open and allow him to venture through his territory.

Well, I don't know whether Gabe will remain an outdoor kitty, but he has another week in the cone, probably two ore three more weeks minimum before the wound has healed thoroughly and the fur grown back. Then it's the holidays and I'll keep him indoors anyway. So it will be near the new year by the time I have to make a real decision.

Gabe is generally an upbeat critter, but he is clearly got himself a case of kitty depression. Aside from the mewling his energy is lower, all he wants to do is sit on my lap all day. That's unusual even for him. He's actually needy instead of the independent-yet-affectionate cat who comes in once in a while to get food and grace you with his royal presence.

Poor kitty.