Dear Ferret Folks-
 
My poor long suffering dog, Allis Chompers, understands that she must
ALLOW weasels to heave themselves up into her giant plastic food bowl and
graze.  Allis bears this assault against her essential canine dignity
stoically, her ears hitched back in silent suffering as the weasels
frolic in her dry dog kibble.  I'm sure that the sight makes her think
wolfly thoughts, but she knows not to act on them.  This is just one of
the many burdens of the domesticated.
 
Last night, she finally had her revenge.
 
Imagine, please, the dog's food bowl.  It is made from thin,
semi-transparent, sunny yellow plastic.  It was a Wal-Mart eighty-eight
cent special.  It is very light weight, and the size of a large spaghetti
draining colander.  I can pour four or five pounds of dry dog kibble into
it at a time.
 
Last night it was virtually empty.  I don't think that there was more
than half a cup of kibble lying at the bottom of the bowl.  Enter
Switch the Kit...prowling around the kitchen, her little feet going
patter-patter on the glossy linoleum floor.  She sighted the bowl and
made a bee line for it as Allis watched in quiet horror.
 
Soft little grey paws reached up to grab the rim of the bowl.  Switch
settled back on her haunches in preparation for the spring necessary to
carry her up and into the bowl.  She leapt....and the empty bowl flipped
over in the air, weightless as a potato chip, and landed neatly on top
of her, upside down.  Brown kibble flew through the air like shrapnel,
skidding across the slick floor for quite some distance.  Switch was
trapped under a yellow plastic dome, and she was NOT happy.
 
Can dogs smile?  They don't really have the lips for it.  Allis has loose
black flappy ones, but I swear they pulled back into a grin, as the bowl
began to zip across the linoleum like the puck on an air hockey table.
It bounced off of the cabinets, it bounced off of the counters, it
bounced off of the dog, it bounced off of my shins.  Around and around it
went.  Switch tried desperately to buck it off of her back, but she was
too freaked out to go about it effectively.  She was a prisoner.
 
I let Allis enjoy the spectacle for a while, she was wagging the
propeller tail of joy the whole time.  You'd think her tail would work
itself loose and fall off of the dog after a workout like that.  She
followed the bowl around the kitchen with her nose, her claws clicking on
the floor like castanets.  I cannot say for certain, but at one point the
bowl zipped between her legs and I think she gave it a good kick.
 
Finally I had mercy and released the ferret, whose fur was smooshed up in
every direction, alive with static from rubbing against the plastic.  Her
whiskers were quivering with rage and indignation.  She might have been a
little dazed from all of those head on collisions with furniture.  Her
eyes were little shiny black points of venom.  Switch galloped across the
floor as if her tail was on fire, and disappeared under the cabinets.
Well, she tried to gallop.  At first she had no traction against the
linoleum and she more or less galloped in place for a few seconds before
her toe pads 'caught' against the slick surface and she could move.  She
sulked beneath the cabinets for a loooong time.
 
I retrieved the food bowl, swept up the loose kibble and refilled the
bowl while Allis watched triumphantly.  A score had been settled.
 
Alexandra
 
Hurricane Lily: "Hee-hee-hee!"
Switch the Kit: "Shut UP!!"
Hurricane Lily: "Hee-hee-hee!"
[Posted in FML issue 3979]