Tag Archives: Hawaii

The back of a black dog's head as he looks down at a black cat eating from his food dish.

Wolves in the Kitchen

avatarPosted on by May 21, 2017  

Pack Leader and I had a great good time howling along with CBC tonight in the kitchen, my favorite section of our den. She gets pretty crazy, banging away in time with the ape music on various pans and lids with a spoon or spatula, waggling her rump and thumping her feet on the floor, all this while howling—and cooking! What could be finer than a Saturday night in our kitchen?

A Sunday morning in our old kitchen in Belcarra, grumbled Toyon. Now that was a kitchen fit for wolves! We even had our own breakfast bar, a rabbit’s height above the floor and so near the stove and dining table that all the leftovers landed in our bowls. He sighed a big, gusty malemute sigh. By Silva, I miss that place!

What’s his complaint? I thought. Ghost wolves don’t need to eat, anyway, dispiriting as that reality may be.

Ghost wolves don’t need to eat, anyway, dispiriting as that reality may be. Click To Tweet

Sila caught my thought. Love and food go together, silly wolf. My son had a limitless appetite for both.

You can say that again, Blue chimed in. Not to mention his appetite for sex. My first litter—eight pups!

You can’t complain about Toyon as a daddy, though, Sila replied. My son brought those babies lot of food.

Blue sighed. Regurgitated kibble. Yes, wonderful. He was a good daddy wolf, if a touch on the ornery side.

Oh, dear. Everyone seemed a little embarrassed, as I am the only wolfdog in the pack who is missing an essential part of the usual puppy-making apparatus.

I was about to reassure everyone that, really, life without the patter of little paws can be quite fulfilling, when Amaruq, the senior among us, broke the silence. Our Yukon cabin was all kitchen—all one room. There was always something good simmering away on the woodstove, most of the year. Pack Leader preferred the woodstove to the propane because one morning when we came back from Dawson City, we opened the door, just about the time the sun broke the horizon, and the whole place exploded. Lucky, Pack Leader had a whatchamacallit…a….

Fire extinguisher, growled Sila. We have heard this story, ’Ruq. Also the one about how good the baby mice in Pack Leader’s dresser drawers tasted, too.

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Taming the Beast: dealing with apes when they first wake up

avatarPosted on by October 12, 2012  

If there’s one thing I learned from my time among apes, it was that some of them can be downright snarly in the morning. Even if they are the sort to be generally more chipper in the morning than the evening, they won’t bound out of bed, ready for action. They need time to fully “wake up”, they say.

I didn’t always understand this. For me, a single sound reaching my furry ears would have me up on my four paws, ready for anything. Not that I’m the aggressive sort — not at all. But I was protective of my pack, and often walked ahead as scout-wolf on our evening constitutionals, in case of danger. Or treats from a stranger, I’ll admit.

Time among apes changed me, and I found as I got on in years I’d prefer to sleep more than do other things. Still, in the morning I was awake right away — usually because my bladder called me to be so.

When I was a young thing, I’d wait for the need to go out to become pressing and urgent before dragging my humans out of bed. This, fellow canines, is a mistake. It will make your human grumpy and your walk short.

Unless you wake up with your bladder already full, you should have some time before it becomes a matter of urgent attention. Wake your human as soon as possible. They will want to have this noxious black liquid to “become alive”, as my Mistress always said. “I’m not alive in the morning without my coffee, Blue,” she’d say, patting my head and scratching behind my ears. To be perfectly honest she wasn’t alive in the morning with coffee; her best hours were always after sunset. But I digress.

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