Susan Contemplates Stupid Pet Tricks

I’ve had a lot of different pets in my life. And each one had a stupid pet trick that was solely his or her own. I had a dog named Tiger that I picked out at the pound for my sixteenth birthday present. He had this trick where he’d drag himself on his belly down our long driveway while clicking his teeth. And he’d very gently take short, skinny little pretzel sticks out of my mouth—my mom was always having me show off that one. He also thought he could walk on water. He’d fly off the side of my dad’s boat after the bait that was being cast out. We called him our Norwegian Herring Hound and had to take a lot of fishhooks out of his mouth when he actually snapped up the bait before it could leave the boat.

Tiger

My first pet as a newlywed was an Irish Setter named Jude. You could balance a Milkbone on her nose and tell her to stay, and she’d sit there cross-eyed until you said, “Okay!” Then she’d flip that bone in the air, catch it and chow it down. She’d also swim for literally hours on end. (Her record was 5 hours in the Sammamish Slough) People from the boat launch near our beach cabin on Hood Canal were always expressing concern that somebody’s dog had fallen off a boat in the middle of the canal. But it was just Jude swimming after some seagull.
Jude and Maxwell

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I honestly don’t remember Maxwell’s trick. You’d think I would—we had that Manx cat for eleven years. All the dead mouse/rat/bird parts he brought me must have given me a mental block.

For just a few weeks shy of fifteen years, we had a brown tabby named Styx who liked to fish his own treats out of the Pounce can, and he sat up and begged like a dog--especially if there was chicken salad involved. He also knocked on my office window when he wanted in. If that didn’t do the trick, he’d hang from the sash and bang his body against the fixed part of the window. His last, sure-fire trick was raking his nails down the glass. THAT got me up toot sweet, lemme tell you.

Styx

Currently we have two cats, Boo and Mojo. Boo hides things. Little pillows, long feather sticks, my glasses. Right this minute my checkbook is missing. I’m hoping that’s because the soulmate took it for something, because God only knows where Boo might have dragged it off to.
Boo

Mojo plays soccer with little crinkle balls by the hour. He packs them in his mouth and usually starts out in the bathroom, because that’s the one room where you can’t lose it. But he loves to be admired and he’s a risk taker, so after a while he’ll pack it back out to the living room and bat it as close to the armoire, the loveseats, the couch as he can get, sliding after it like Ichiro into home plate. And when he loses it, he comes complaining to me and doesn’t let up until I get the yardstick out to fish it from beneath whichever piece of furniture it’s disappeared.

We won’t even talk about his photo paper addiction.

Mojo

This is probably waaay more information than any of you ever wanted. Lucky for you, huh, that I believe in tit for tat. So tell me about your pets’ tricks.