Jake Dog Meets Mean Ol' Ms Baby Doll

When Jake Dog was still a small puppy, I brought him home with me so it was here at Mathom House that he met his first cat. He explored the downstairs, excitedly running this way and that. He loved the place. What wonderful smells there are in a messy house! He followed me all over, snuffling.

When I carried a basket of clean laundry upstairs, Jake scrambled on puppy legs up the narrow stairs to see what kind of wonders there were on the second floor. He sprang through the bedroom door just as Mean Old Ms. Baby Doll jumped off the bed, where she had been napping. Though the full grown cat was about the same weight as puppy Jake, she fluffed her nasty self up to a enormous white ball, hissed, and took a swipe at him. It was his first cat experience and it was a bad one. He lost it, making a watery poo on the carpet, a stain that took weeks to eradicate.

Later I found out that my mother was feeding Jake Dog from the table and that day she had spare ribs and sauerkraut. 

Even though he was soon ten times bigger, Jake Dog never got over his respect for Ms. Baby Doll or for any cat, for that matter. In time, he developed an unusual relationship with them. He was petrified when any strange felines approached him outside but Mathom House cats were part of his flock. He tried to get along with them.

Mean Old Ms. Baby Doll came to a grudging acceptance of Jake Dog. She found herself places to sleep and ignored him, but Jake was often nearby, especially when his humans were busy 

Their temperaments were poles apart. Cranky Ms. Baby Doll figured out that when I changed sheets in the spare room, it often meant we were going to have company, something she did not relish, so she growled and hissed as I worked, sometimes swiping at me and the sheets to express her immense displeasure. Jake agreed that vacuuming and sheet changing were sure signs of visitors, but he went into a state of anticipatory wiggles. He LOVED company! That is why I waited until the very last moment to clean Mathom House before visitors arrived. My dislike of housework had nothing to do with it. Really!