My Boy Blue...

It’s likely that some of you will conjure up a scene from the movie Old School with Will Farrell crying out “You’re my boy, Blue!” when stumbling upon the title of this post.  We hear this all the time when people learn our dog’s name, Blue.  Personally, not being a huge Will Farrell fan, I must admit I had to Google the phrase, before I knew what people were talking about. While I can watch Elf repeatedly at Christmas time, I considered agreeing to see Talladega Nights, penance for the occasional chick flick!

When my husband and I married and combined households, I have to confess I was not 100% sold on the idea of having a dog come live with us. No offense to dogs in general, or to Blue specifically, you see, I grew up with dogs as pets and loved having them. However, I’ve spent most of my adult life sharing my home with felines. Not because I liked them any better, they just fit into my lifestyle better being career oriented and often maintaining a fairly aggressive schedule. Dogs need to be walked and cats came potty trained; it was a no brainer for me.

Although, not as rewarding; I had been a cat owner for the last twenty-three years. I say cat owner because I don’t wish to be labeled a “Cat Person”; I am an animal lover.  Let’s be clear about this because the stereotypical Cat Person is weird and everyone knows that…Please don’t send me any nasty-grams on this subject.

Where was I… ok, so here we are getting married, we each have one child, good that works out, we each have a treadmill… that might be tight but we can work it out and oh…? I have two cats and you have a dog. I might not have been 100% on board but I’m no idiot, and I am not going to be the evil stepmother who would not take the dog in… so we may need to pay for cat therapy sessions but let’s give it a try.

So, Blue joined us and the cats hid for about three months… and when Blue was in his crate, they came out, ate, used the litter box and sauntered by the crate just to let Blue know they were still in charge!

Have you ever noticed that dogs come willingly when called, tails wagging, ready to slobber all over you, and cats sit there looking at you as if to say “So, if I come, what’s in it for me?”  Well, my cats aren’t really like that; their downright needy and I’m pretty certain Nik, thinks he’s a dog. So, after a few months we all learned to live peacefully together. That’s not to say there isn’t an occasional chase…but in general they co-exist in harmony. 

The funniest part about it is the jealousy; it’s gotten to the point that when I call the cat, the dog rushes over and it’s not uncommon to have all three of them on you at once.

So… this post is for my boy Blue, who has wormed his way into my heart by following me from room to room, watching to see that I’m ok, and taking every opportunity to slobber all over my face whenever he gets the chance. You are my loving companion, and I wouldn’t want to be on this journey without you…