WHY WE HAVE TWO DOGS, a brief timeline of events, by me.

Mid-October, 2009 - Halloween approaches, nights grow longer and darker.  I recognize that I am living in a real house, not an apartment, for the first time ever.  We have a yard, and a fence, and Texas sunflowers stretching towards the sun for at least the length of 3 football fields behind the fence.  I live in a subdivision, dammit.  I think about how no one I don't know can hear me from the floor above or below me.  One day, Boyfriend and I go to get cat litter from Petsmart for Jack, Boyfriend's impressively indifferent cat.  There is a van full of adoptable dogs out in the parking lot.  We decide to stop at Palm Valley Animal Shelter on the way home from the Petsmart.  I tell Boyfriend that I'm not going to get a dog, I just want to look.  The next day, I bring home a dog and call him Ace.  Within 24 hours I realize that Ace is a stupid name, opt for something more cat-like, and go with Felix.  I cut myself some slack with this one, because really, anything is better than his pound name, "Nestor the Dog Molester."  Actually, just "Nestor," but now you try saying it without the rest following along.  No one needs a "Nestor" living in their midst as the days grow longer and darker in the fall.  Spooky.

Mid-November, 2009 - Nestor the Dog Molester Felix is. humping. everything.  People, furniture, his poor innocent squeaky toys.  I know that I must get him fixed because my grandmother is coming to visit with my parents for Thanksgiving, and I cannot have this ex-molester humpy dog running around, messing up all of my Martha Stewart plans.  I don't know much about etiquette, but I'm guessing that there are good reasons that you don't have tea parties on a farm during mating season.  No esta bueno.  I call around to a couple of vets but, being a young professional struggling to get my sh*t together, I cannot find an appointment before my family comes to visit.  This is what is word vomiting out of my mouth at school two weeks before Thanksgiving.  The mother of a student in another class hears my words, and my distress, and as I remember she put her finger beside her nose like Santa before he goes back up the chimney, and said quietly - "I know a guy."  And I decided that I loved this woman, and I would follow her wherever she would lead me.  This is how I ended up in her driveway with Felix, as she acted as translator and I loaded Felix into the back of some man's green truck.  The man didn't speak any English, so I stumbled with my Spanish and told him to please be careful with my dog.  When he left, the student mother asked me what it meant, what I had said.  She wondered if it was perhaps a colloquialism from where I grew up in Maryland.  Then she parroted: "Listen with care to my danger." I had not meant to be so threatening, but it must have worked, because a day later, the guy brought Felix the dog back with a cone on his head, sans testicles.  I wrote him a check for 100 bucks and said "grassy-ass" before I went on my way. No grandma-humping this holiday season, Nestor.
<cue lonely desert music>
Meanwhile...
Boyfriend is applying to graduate school on the east coast, and so I am contemplating a move back to the east coast.  In preparation for potentially dangerous big city life, I have taught Felix to fall over and play dead when I point a finger gun at him and yell "BANG."  Never can be too cautious in times like these.

Spring 2010 - Boyfriend is going to North Carolina and I will live in my parents' basement until I find a job.  Maybe Felix and I will both play dead.

Summer 2010 - I am hired to work at a school in Brooklyn, New York.  I will live the city life.  It's a good thing I taught Felix about playing dead.  We move, and I bring dog treats in the car, in case we need reinforcement.

Fall 2010 - There is a fraternity of old Italian men who sit out on folding chairs on the sidewalk one block north of my house.  One has a huge nose, another has huge ears, and yet another has huge hands, presumably from all the internal processing their livers are constantly getting after.  They like to tell me if I am doing a good or bad job when I walk Felix on their section of the sidewalk.  I start my walks going north so that I can get their feedback.  Only they don't really say it so much as drunkenly sing it, just as I would if I were all alone and making up a song about tortellini while making spaghetti.  This is funny, entertaining, everything that I thought that Brooklyn would be.  I am an adult, living on Sesame Street, where mixed ethnicities and species are all just going about their day.  And then I loop up by the grocers, down around under the subway tracks, avoid the homeless man who lives in the box under the bridge, and back to my door.  I'm a city slicker.

Winter 2010 - The Italian Fraternity is getting bold.  They want to know the boy dog's name.  They say it is a cat name, and this not good.  But ees good that I have boy dog to protect me.  But ees bad that I not talking to dog more.  You must talk to dog.  He will do -eh- what you say.   I stop going north, and opt for the homeless man's sidewalk section.  He is much less invasive, I suppose because in this case I am the invader.

Spring 2011 - I can't afford Brooklyn.  Felix and I are both stir-crazy, and even as the garbage begins to thaw through the snow banks, we can't find enough greenery to make us believe that what we are breathing holds any semblance of oxygen.

Summer 2011 - My family has rules about these things, who you can live with and move to towns for, but I've decided to bend them.  Felix and I do not want to live in New York any more, so we will be adjourning to Boyfriend's country house in North Carolina.  We move in while we figure out what our next steps will be.  Felix learns to pee on the grass again, with one minor mix-up in a lobby on a very exterior-looking post.  We start every day with a big inhale of the actually wonderful smell of the converted tobacco warehouse that is Boyfriend's loft apartment.  I love this apartment, I love Boyfriend, I love my Felix, and Felix is learning about cohabitation with Jack the cat.  Jack the cat doesn't mind too much, because the loft has lots of incomplete walls that he can climb around on top of, far out of reach of anyone who would care to make him anything but indifferent.  Except in the mornings, when his hungry mrrreeeoooowwwllll shatters peaceful dreams.

Fall 2011 - Boyfriend, Felix, Jack, and I are all living together in a house that we rented.  It is the sweetest little white house, with a fireplace in the living room and a TV room that has a separate half bath to keep the litter box in, so that we don't have to smell that mess.  There's a fence out back, so Felix can play, and Jack attempts to hang himself on the fence.  We recognize that Jack has gone from indifference to disdain and sometimes psychosis, mostly because of the dog, in the way that he urinates in any pile of my things, including my open suitcases that contained most of my clothing, and smacks us in the face when he wants breakfast in the morning.  Claws first.

Winter 2011 - Boyfriend is still in graduate school and I am still teaching.  We wake up, he puts on his snuggle like a robe, and makes my coffee while I stumble without grace to get ready for work.  He sweeps through the sweet little house, slippers scuffling on the old hardwood planks, Jack mrrreeeeooowwllling, and Felix wagging.  He heats up water for me to dump on the windshield of my car, because it frosted over last night and we don't have a scraper.  Tonight it will snow, and I won't have work tomorrow, so Felix and I will marathon Downton Abbey.  But I don't know that yet, and I'm going to be late for work if I don't go now.

Summer 2012 - College Roommate and I wake up on the floor of the sweet little house.  Everything is moved out except for the air mattress, vacuum cleaner, and a few other essentials.  College Roommate came to visit so that she could see North Carolina, and it just so happened that the only way to make it happen was to come for the weekend before my departure.  Boyfriend has been working in Atlanta since May, and as soon as I get the sweet little house totally clean so that we can get the deposit back,  I'll go join him, Jack, and Felix in our new tiny apartment in midtown.  And eventually I discover that I successfully removed all of the evidence, except one sock that was hiding beside the dryer, costing us a couple hundred bucks from our deposit.  But first, roommate and I are going to check out a cool thing that we haven't checked out yet:  The Duke Lemur Center.  Must. get. lemur. themed. snow globe. christmas tree. ornament.

Summer 2012 - Felix and I have moved again, on one condition:  I am retiring.  Twenty-seven years old, and a retiree.

Fall 2012 to Summer 2013 - Hopeful.  Grateful.  Bored.  Discouraged.  Hopeful.  Grateful.  Bored.  Discouraged.  Hopeful.

Fall 2013 - Maybe I won't retire.  Maybe it won't be so bad to wake up and walk Felix around the block.  There aren't any fraternities around, and there's no bridge to walk under.  Baton Bob isn't so bad, right?  Transvestite Prostitute Gangs?  I'll hear them come clicking in their heels.  And Felix still knows how to play dead.  Back to work.

Winter 2013 - Jack doesn't pee in my stuff anymore.  Now he just pees on Felix's bed.  Just occasionally, just when he's decided that it's time for us to get a new bed for Felix.  Because, really, he uses it more than Felix does, anyway.

Spring 2014 - Fiance and I are going today to look at houses with his family.  I want one with a big yard and a gated front porch, for Felix.

First weekend in May, 2014 - It's moving day!  We found an awesome house with a gated front porch and a fenced in backyard and we are buying it.  Jack doesn't help us pack, he kinda just sits on the pillows and acts like his best indifferent self.  Felix wags and looks worried and wags some more.  I haven't mentioned his eyebrows.  He has incredible eyebrows.

June 2014 - Jack is not doing so well.  The vet says he has a bad gum infection and that we will have to get teeth taken out, because he isn't eating very much.  He's gotten so thin.  He doesn't mrrreeeooowwwll.  He curls up on my lap, sticks out his tongue, and closes his eyes while I pet him.  He purrs, and I can see his lungs filling, emptying.  Filling, emptying.  His spine is knobby under his soft fur.

July 2014 - I took Jack in to get his teeth removed today.  The vet just called and said he is doing fine now, but on the last stitch he flat lined and they had to resuscitate him.  That sounds more like the indifferent Jack I knew.  That's his old self.

August 2014 - Fiance and I have been talking about adding a second dog to our pack.  Felix loves to play so much, he would love to have a friend to play with.  So we tried dog-sitting a younger dog for our friends.  The other dog never met a cat before, and somehow we ended up with Jack clinging to the floor for dear life under the coffee table, where he was safe, as we dragged the other dog back outside to play with Felix some more.  When both dogs were safely outside, and we were inside with Jack, we heard a pfffft sound.  A new dog literally scared the sh*t out of Jack, right there under the coffee table.

November 2014 - The whole family is coming to our new house for Thanksgiving!  Felix is very excited.  He loves walks with his old aunts, Cinnamon and Sugar.  Jack is going to stay in the office where things will be calm.  We will go in there and give him some lap and petting time.  And we got him one of those cat heating pads, so he can have a lap in case we can't sneak away as much as we'd like.

December 11, 2014 - Fiance and I went to the gym earlier tonight.  When we came back, Jack was laying on the floor in the bathroom, heaving.  Fiancee scooped Jack up and I got the car keys, and we went into the dark night. Fiance carried Jack, petting his soft gray fur, and I drove. "I think he's gone,"  Fiance said.  He was still petting his soft, gray fur.  And still I drove.

December 13, 2014 - Realization: Jack wasn't really so indifferent, he was just a skeptic.

December 15, 2014 - Realization:  Jack won't be home when I get there.

December 19, 2014 - It is the last day of school before winter break.  We are watching A Wrinkle in Time.  It's terrible.

December 22, 2014 - I have a terrible headache.  I'm so tired.

December 23, 2014 - I have a terrible headache.  I'm so tired.

December 24-29 ~ celebratory Christmas haze, family, gifts, travel.

December 30, 2014 - I bet I'm having all of these headaches and feeling exhausted because I'm pregnant.  Accidental pregnancy, brought to you by yours truly, here to brighten your holiday and make you feel better about your life choices.  You're welcome, world.

Later that same day - I'm not pregnant, all we ever do is hold hands.  And now I'm sad about it.  But I did sleep until noon many days in a row, thereby accidentally quitting caffeine.  Also, the drinking. Melancholy and self-loathing, here to brighten your holiday and make you feel better about your life choices.  You're welcome, world.

January 1, 2015 - Last night, Fiance and I rang in the new year at an improv comedy club with friends.  One of our friends took home a puppet HR dolphin from the show Archer, and got a picture with the actress who does the voice for Pam.  Our friends have two dogs, and they sure are cute pups.

January 2, 2015 - "Fiance, can we go and look at dogs tomorrow?  I don't want to get a dog, just to go and look."

January 3, 2015.  Puppy O'clock - We drove to shelters all day long today.  This was a bad choice, because we could have spent our time in more useful ways.  Fiance leaves for DC on Monday, we do not need a new puppy right now.  One shelter requires home visits to check and make sure that the environment will work for the dog if it's a pit bull mix.  She is a pit bull mix, so she is going to come visit tomorrow.  Just to look.  Just to see if she will fit.

January 4, 2015 - She's still here.  We let the shelter guy leave.  They called her September because someone left her on the doorstep to the pound in September.  They weren't sure how long she'd have to stay at the shelter, because people don't usually like to adopt pit bull mixes.  Felix and September Lana have had zoomies in the back yard all morning long.  We are going to call her Lana, like from the show Archer, because Fiance wants to be able to yell it (like they do on the show) into the back yard, instead of "come."
Realization:  Jack made my heart more permeable.  Mushier.  I made Felix and Jack do a lot of things before I decided that they were the best of their kind, and I love Lana already.