Currently, Fairfax is sitting next to me, chewing a mint rubber toy that will shortly become green confetti, contemplating a great escape to the bed in the guestroom or possibly the downstairs couch--places he is not allowed to be, but believes are his. He knows when I'm so focused on something that I won't notice if he slips away, and so he waits for that moment to "drop" his bone on the ground, pick it up, glance toward me to see if I'm looking, and if I am not, he leaves my office for other parts of the house, where he can let his "manners" deteriorate and live as he feels he should, lounging on expensive furniture and terrorizing the cat.
Already today, he has chilled with Poppy on our bed (while I was eating lunch and mistakenly believed he was underneath the dining room table, because he just loves to sit with me while I eat. Not.). He has crawled under the guest bed to be just like the cat (unsurprisingly, she crawled out, and the way I found out about this was that he started barking at her to tell her she was expected to play with him and was not behaving properly). He has also slinked away with his toy to chew it on the guest bed (because that's much more fun than chewing it under supervision).
Our Guiding Eyes regional manager, and most people with a brain, would say I need to be more attentive to him, and he to me. It's true, but, also true is that I get so engrossed in reading and writing that all other input is simply a distraction.
It only occurred to me a few minutes ago to close the office door to keep Fairfax contained. This will work for a little while, until he gets bored and ditches his toy to whine at the door. After all, he believes he should have the same privileges as the cat, who is presently romping about the house. If he is smarter than me, she is smarter than both of us. She knows she is faster than he is, and she knows that playing with his tail is the best way to distress him. She knows that if she eats while he lies down next to her, it's a great way to torture him.
Most importantly, she knows that if she can't wake me up at 5:45 A.M., which is, after all, when the birds are up and everyone else should be, too, she can just wake the dog up, and his whining will ensure that the humans get up immediately. More than once, she has clawed and pawed and even bitten me at the crack of dawn, been "dismissed" from her perch on my pillow, sauntered away, and come racing back to the bed at the exact moment the dog starts whining. Coincidence? Absolutely not.
So here we'll be, for a little while longer, I at work and Fairfax chewing, the cat lounging in the guest room, until he needs a break. After all, let's not kid ourselves about who's in charge of this house. The cat runs it, he rents, and Superman and I are really just the staff.
