Kudo's Narrative: Living with a Pack

Even though I am the Empress Kudo, and therefore deserve admiring multitudes, I live in a very small pack consisting of Mommy, me, and the two cats, Thelma and Louise. Thelma is a skinny black cat and Louise is a fat black-and-white cat, and they are eight-year-old sisters who have lived with Mommy since they were babies. They are wussie cats. I like to chase them because they run, and furry creatures that run are just born to be chased. They hide under Mommy’s bed when I’m around. That’s because I’m brave and fierce, and they know it.

Now that we’ve established who is in our pack, let me tell you how I run this place.

Mommy is retired and she is a lazybones. She wakes up about 9:00 in the morning, goes into a rain room, gets out, dries off, and puts on her coat. Every day she puts on a different coat (she calls her coat “jeans and a shirt”), so I can’t tell you what color her coat is going to be from one day to the next. Then she comes out to the living room, where my crate sits right next to the fireplace, and lets me out. I give her tail wags and kisses when she lets me out, because I know that makes her happy. I run around the condo a few laps while Mommy puts another coat on that she gets from the front closet, grabs her keys, and gets my leash. Once the leash is on, we head outside.

Our condo building is at one end of the block, and it’s a gradual rise to the top end of the block. We head toward the top end, passing the large lawn in front of the building next door, and…

WAIT!!! There are bugs jumping in the lawn! Hang on, let me go pounce on one! Oh, here’s another one! Let me pounce on that one, too!

…continue on up the sidewalk. I sniff the lawns in front of the next two houses, and stop to see if the silly Jack Russell Terrier that lives in the first house notices me and starts barking.

HANG ON!!! There’s a squirrel coming down that tree! Let me just scrunch myself down on the sidewalk so he doesn’t see me. Here he comes. Don’t anybody move. Let me get into my lowrider creep and sneak up on him. Ha! I pounce, but he sees me in time and gets back up the tree. Next time, buster.

So where were we? Oh yeah, just past the Jack Russell’s house. Next we come to a set of six townhouses where my heartthrob, Comet, used to live. Comet is an older man of three, and is mostly a Golden Retriever and maybe something else. Comet and his pack moved last month to a new house, but I still hope he’ll come out his old door one of these days. I sniff the air and can’t get his scent. Maybe tomorrow.

Up here, on the left, are three plum trees planted in the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the street. Birds live in those trees. Sometimes they fall out. I hope one falls out today. Hmmmm… maybe not.

Now we’re getting near Buttercup’s house at almost the end of the block. Buttercup is a Bulldog with a mean face. Buttercup usually pees on the grassy strip in front of her place. I like to pee right over Buttercup’s pee, just to show her who’s running this neighborhood. I also like to pee here because it’s a block from our door, which I want to keep clean. I sniff around and Mommy says “Do bidness, Kudo,” but I can’t smell any Buttercup pee right now. I’m going to hold it a while longer.

Now we're up to the last house at the end of the block. I like this place because they almost never mow their lawn, and it's soft grass. I nibble on it. Basically, I just stop by here for the complimentary salad bar, but sometimes there's some added fun in the form of Sophie the cat. Sophie guards her property. I'd like to play with Sophie, and I go into play-bow posture, but Sophie puts her back up and hisses. Then she charges me off the property. I dance and circle around Sophie, but it always ends with Sophie chasing me away. I respect Sophie.

We cross to the other side of the street, then walk back down. One house keeps its lawn and grassy strip looking really nice. The grass is soft and lush and feels good when I walk on it. Sometimes I like to pee there, especially when they have just mowed it, but…

WAIT!!! There’s a lawn moth! I pounce on it, but it flies up. I snap at it and almost get it. Let me jump a little higher. SNAP!!! Darned thing cheats.

Mommy’s getting impatient and says, “Bidness, Kudo.” I know, I know. Can’t she see there’s a lot to do, first? *sigh*

We get down to our end of the block, but instead of crossing back over, we turn right and head for the huge sculpture of the Troll underneath the Aurora Bridge. The Aurora Bridge is a big, six-lane affair, and it crosses high over the Lake Washington Ship Canal. The Troll is just a head and shoulders, lurking under the bridge where the bridge touches land again, but the Troll has pulled a VW Bug in off the street with its left hand. People seem to think it’s pretty neat, and tour buses stop there all the time. I hate that. People get out of those buses, and they always want to pet me when we walk by. Do. Not. Touch. An. Empress. Unless. She. Says. You. May. Geeze, people, what kind of pack were you raised in? No manners at all.

We walk past the Troll to the end of that block. I sniff around the trees on the grassy strip, and somebody has peed there. Right there. Ahhhhhh… I cover it up with my own. Much better. Mommy says, “Good bidness, Kudo,” as if I didn’t know how to pee, fercryinoutloud, and then we head back home.

Once we’re back inside, Mommy puts an extra-tall child’s gate across the door to her bedroom. The wussie cats stay in there where I can’t get them. This was Mommy’s solution to the problem of me chasing them. Well, she says it was a problem. I say it was good clean fun, and I don’t like the gate. One of these days a big Doberman is going to come here, stand in front of it, and demand, “Kudo’s Mommy! Tear down this gate!” Ha! I’m going to love that!

Mommy goes into the kitchen and makes some kind of funny coffee with foamy milk in it, and I go into the den to my toy box. My toy box looks a lot like a cat’s litter box, without the litter of course, and contains all my tennis balls, some ropes, one of Mommy’s old socks, two squeak toys, a tennis ball dumbbell, a washcloth, a chew bone, a couple of real bones, and… oh yeah, some more tennis balls. I like tennis balls.

Pretty soon Mommy comes into the den, too, and fires up her computer. I grab a real bone and go out to the living room to see if any sun is coming through the sliding glass door. If there is, I take a nap right there in the sunshine. If not, I come back to the den and take a nap near Mommy’s chair.

After a couple of hours, during which she gets up a bunch of times to get fruit, then a yogurt, then a roll, then to take her coffee mug back to the kitchen, I wake up. By then it’s getting close to noon, so Mommy puts on her other coat again, gets her purse, keys, and my leash, takes the gate off the bedroom door, and we head down to the garage. She helps me up into my car crate, and then we’re off to the park.

The off-leash park is close, only a little over two miles away, so it doesn’t take us long to get there. We park, Mommy helps me out of my crate, and I start sniffing the air to get a preview of who is here. Oh boy, I smell Ellie and Cookie and Freddy and… is that Chloe, too? And Rasta! We get through the gate, Mommy removes my leash, and I’m off to the races!

The dogs come down the hill to greet me, and I get Rasta to chase me, right away. Rasta is a Jack Russell mix, and the silly dog still hasn’t figured out that he’ll never catch me. I am the wind! I run and run and run, and a whole bunch of dogs are after me. Just about the time one of them is going to catch up with me, I make a hairpin turn and the big dogs spin out. Ha ha ha!!! I fly over the ground as the other dogs stumble back onto their feet, and lap them as they try to get their speed back up again. Ha ha ha!!!

BUT WAIT!!! There’s a squirrel on the other side of the fence! I forget about the other dogs and go into lowrider again. I creep up to the fence but it’s a FENCE, blast it all, and the stupid squirrel runs away.

I go get Mommy and make her throw me a ball. Not just any old nasty park ball, but a clean ball she brings every day just for me. She tosses it about 20 feet, I go get it and bring it back to her. She tosses it again, and I go get it again. She tosses it a third time, I go running for it…

HOLD IT!!! Old Bucky is coming into the park. I must run down to the gate so I can greet him with kisses as he lumbers in. Bucky is a venerated ancient dog, some kind of big, black, hairy mountain dog, and he doesn’t move very fast. That means I can kiss him all the way up the hill. I jump up to reach his mouth as he walks, Bucky walking, me jumping and kissing, until we get up the hill and Bucky lies down. Whew! I need a drink of water.

Mommy has picked up the ball and hidden it in her coat. That’s all right, I don’t want it just now. I want to wrestle with Rasta for a while.

Or maybe I do want the ball, after all. I run over to Mommy, look at her pocket, and jump up and down a couple of times. Mommy gets the ball out and tosses it. I run over to it, look at it, and decide I was right the first time. I leave it there and go back to Rasta.

After about an hour, Mommy puts the leash back on me and we get back in the car. Then we run errands, if we have any. I sleep on the nice, soft pad in my crate. Sometimes I wake up and look out the window, especially if there’s a dog in another car. If we get out of the car and walk someplace, people stop Mommy and tell her I look just like a little fox. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it. I am NOT a fox! Mommy explains that to them.

When we come home again, Mommy puts the gate back across the bedroom door and I take a nap. Sometimes Mommy makes a whole lot of noise with the vacuum cleaner. I don’t like that noise, and I run around her and around her to make her stop. She puts me in my crate, and I don’t like that at all! I paw furiously on the wire door to make her let me out, but she won’t even look at me. I hate that vacuum cleaner! Grrrrrrr!

Around 4:00 Mommy feeds me. She feeds the stupid cats, too, but they don’t get homemade dinner. Mommy makes all my moist food (I can also have some dry pre-packaged kibbles in the morning, if I want, but I rarely want them), which she learned how to do by reading a bunch of stuff on web sites. I get ground beef or turkey or beefalo or chicken or lamb, plus some vegetable goop she grinds up, plus some vitamins, plus some bone meal, plus some flax seed oil, and it’s yummy! I lick my bowl clean.

We hang out for a while, then about 5:30 Mommy takes me for a long walk, about six blocks. A few weeks ago when we were out walking, I found a tennis ball. Now, I know I already have a lot of tennis balls, but this tennis ball is extra special. Why, you ask? Because I found it myself, of course. It is my very favorite tennis ball, and the only way Mommy got me to come home that day was to toss the tennis ball about ten feet ahead, let me run for it, then toss it another ten feet, let me run for it, until we got home. When we play living room fetch, it is the best ball to play with.

I take another nap until about 8:00. Then I get Mommy to play living room fetch with me, or wrestle on the floor with me. If we play fetch, I pretend to lose the tennis ball under a chair or behind the couch. When she reaches out to get it, I nibble her fingers. She pretends to scold me, but she is laughing too hard. I laugh too. I show her I’m laughing by wagging my tail.

After about a half-hour of that, we take a short two-block walk, up to the end of our street and back again. Did you know that there are still bugs in the lawn at night? Well, there are, and I pounce on them all over again. Each time we leave for our walks, Mommy removes the cat gate, and each time we come back she puts it across the doorway again. One of these days, she’s going to forget. I just know it.

When we come back in, Mommy reads, or watches television, or plays on her computer. I take another nap. Around midnight we take our last walk, then Mommy puts me in my crate for the night. She’s still up, though, and I want to be up with her, but I’ll just curl up for a minute on this comfortable fuzzy pad in my crate and…

October, 2004