And your little dog, too…

So, I’ve known for some time now that my mother was planning a visit down to my place for the first week of August.  That’s no surprise.  She hasn’t been down here since this time last year, honestly I’m surprised she lasted this long.  She’s bringing her computer for me to fix too, which again, isn’t any big surprise.  I’ve long since resigned myself to being the family tech support monkey.  Whatever, it’s easier to just fix this crap and get it over with than try to teach them how to do this stuff themselves.  The only sense of impending dread I’ve had up until now is my mother’s propensity to extend a ‘few days’ into a ‘few weeks’, when she comes down to the coast.  Fortunately, I’ve got a major deadline right in the middle of her visit, so I’ll have an excuse to hide at my office for 10-12 hours a day while she’s here.  All in all, I thought I was fairly well prepared for her visit.  Until, of course, I found out that…

She wants to bring her dog with her.  And by want, I mean she’s already made plans on doing so, without ever having asked if that was ok with me or if I had any objections to it.  My mother’s dog, I might add, is less than a year old, and hasn’t quite mastered that whole ‘house broken’ thing down yet.  It’s a hyper active, yippy little meat sack of a dog, the kind of dog you could kick 20 yards.  It’s a miniature schnauzer, and I can already see it causing a world of headaches for me.  Why?  Well…

I don’t ‘hate’ dogs, per say, but I don’t think anyone would mistake me for a dog-person.  That’s why I have cats.  2 of them, in fact.  Nora and Kiera.  They are both typical cats, in that they know that they own everything in my apartment, including me.  If it’s head scratching time, it doesn’t matter that I’m arms deep in a computer trying to replace a burned out power supply, it’s head scratching time, damnit!  They are both very spoiled cats, and they know it.  So, putting a strange smelling, hyperactive dog that is larger than either of my cats in their space, and expecting them to live with it for at least a week… yeah, that’s not going to be fun.

Have I mentioned that my cats will not hesitate to show their displeasure at things that annoy them, with extreme prejudice?  I’m serious!  I’ve already been hospitalized once because of my cats…  I tried to break up a fight between the two of them a few months ago, and they both turned on me and clawed the fuck out of hands.  My left hand got infected and was at risk of needing surgery to undo the damage.  I spent a weekend hospitalized, with an IV in either arm pumping antibiotics in to fight off the infection.  Real fun, I assure you.

So, my mother is bringing her dog into my 2 bedroom apartment with my 2 homicidal cats, while asking me to fix her computer and put up with her in my space for no less than a solid week, maybe two...  What could possibly go wrong?

--Crash