Well, after unexpected quadruple heart bypass surgery and a triple column bypass I’m back, which I’ll admit feels pretty good.
One of the biggest challenges when you suddenly have to leave your home for a time without arrangements in place for your furmily members is the mayhem that swirls about for a bit and the potential humour possibilities within.
So let’s go straight to the funny.
Before I share the shenanigans that developed at my humble abode, allow me to tell you a story related to me by my roommate of a few days post-surgery at St. Boniface Hospital. He had also done the bypass gig.
He had had to leave his young frisky pooch (can’t remember the breed) with local family that stepped up to provide temporary boarding for fido, who was most enthusiastic about engaging in family activities.
A little too much so. Family members included a four-year-old boy whose birthday arrived just shortly after the dog did. The young lad was thrilled with the big yummy chocolate cake Mom and Dad had waiting for him. He was so thrilled that he set the cake on the floor for a minute to go fetch the family from the next room so they could all chow down. Unfortunately, fido thought that meant the cake was for him, so he “wolfed” most of it down before they all returned.
That didn’t go well.
But the story becomes truly adorable when, instead of getting angry, the young man took the dog aside and kindly explained, for 20 minutes or so, why it was wrong for him to eat the cake, that chocolate cake isn’t good for dogs and why in the future, should a cake opportunity present itself again, it would be best for the dog to leave the cake alone.
What a kind, gentle young man, although after listening intently to it all, I’m sure fido mumbled under his breath, “Yeah right. In your dreams, kid.”
Priceless.
Now at my house, my very grown up “kids” — Heather and hubby Alan Lawless, Andrea and partner Jeff Gervin and son Lyle Mustard — really shone in their efforts to take care of pretty much everything, a main focus being my two big dogs and three cats.
Within just a few days my dogs Winston and Clementine were delivered by Cadillac to a superb doggie “spa” in Brandon. They will have arrived home just as you’re reading this. Spoiled rotten out there they were, and deserved every bit of it.
At home for the duration, the cats have been treated as royalty as well. I’ve been back home with them for nearly three weeks now, but I just couldn’t have two giant dogs jumping up on my chest and possibly undoing my new “zipper,” as the sternum bypass scar is called.
The humour here comes from when daughter Andrea Mustard and her guy Jeff came to stay at the house, visit me while also taking care of the cats, bringing their seven-month-old new baby bassett hound “Buck” with them.
The cats — Jeandeau, Ringo and Sunny, who love cuddling with Winston and Clementine — were not at all comfortable with this stranger invading their home. So as soon as he would friskily approach them, they’d head for the basement, Buck hot on their heels, who would chase them all around the furniture until Andrea caught him and took him back upstairs. It happened, much to the cats’ chagrin, several times.
Most recent Mustard cat Sunny was most determined to stand nose to nose with eagerly panting Mr. Frisky, but then would blink, drop his head a bit and bolt for the stairs, Buck bouncing along close behind.
Buck hasn’t been back for a while, but the cats keep giving me that “how could you?” look. Hey, I was in the hospital.
Have a great weekend, folks.
Comments and column ideas welcome!
lmustard1948@gmail.com
