Be a Responsible Pet Owner

Favorite side for your pet

We all seem to have our favorite sides sitting at the table, walking with someone, sitting on the sofa, sleeping on the bed, or just about whatever activity we can think of.  Sometimes it will be a different side for an activity with a different person.

• Okay, what brought me to this!  

• My 2 Siamese have this ritual every morning to suck heat and groom each other.  This transpires on the back cushion of the sofa.  

• When I face the sofa it is on the left.  Maggie usually gets up there first and settles into a nice position.  She is shortly followed by Molly, 

• who promptly takes the right side of Maggie (inside position when facing the sofa).  It doesn’t seem to matter which way Maggie is facing at the time, it is always the inside position of the sofa.

When they get in the cat bed on the love seat it doesn’t seem to matter who is on the left or right.

  It also doesn’t seem to matter when they get on the back of the love seat after having been in the sunny window.  When the wall heater turns on and they scurry to park themselves in front of it, it also doesn’t matter which side they are on.  Molly is smaller and sneaks in under the opening on the carpet to get her ears warm.  That doesn’t suit Maggie and so there is no juggling for positions.

Most of the time all goes quite peacefully, but there are a few outbursts and hissing brought on by Maggie for infringement of space.  I guess we all need our space at times!

Does any of your pets have the same quirk? 

I would imagine they are similar to us in some aspects and not totally motivated by left or right.  I had one cat that when I laid down on the sofa she was insistent on being in my arms and at other times only on the inside of the sofa.  That may have been because she didn’t want to fall off if I decided to turn over.  She was kind of a self-centered little cat, I suppose she got that honestly by being a “show cat“.  She did have a “cattitude“, we really loved her but never would have tolerated the behavior if she had been a two-legged kid!

What we put up with from our pets

seems quite natural.  But then again you don’t send them off into public unattended to totally embarrass you for their ill-mannered behavior, such as we do with our offspring.  They do have a tendency to really reflect on us if they act badly or speak out of turn.  If our pets are bad during the company, we just scoop them up and confine them to another place in the house.  Out of sight out of mind and it can bring a chuckle to our guests, not so pretty with the 2-legged family members.
 
 
I remember on one occasion Minnie (the one with the attitude) jumped on the table when my brother and his wife had just sat down to our well-prepared dinner.  Yikes!  She quickly whisked away and spent the rest of dinner in the bedroom.  Ah yes, all the fun stuff with the pets!