My room... and my pets

Our house has 3 bedrooms. Two of these are mostly accurately named, as they contain beds. The one we sleep in definitely does. The other has most of a bed, well, the base and some blankets. It also contains some drawers we can't fit into our bedroom and a couple of boxes of stuff we haven't unpacked yet.( We've only been here 10 months...) Some evenings it contains the Cat. Other times, like when She can get in there, and we aren't fast enough to catch her, it may contain dog poo. Then there is my room. I am allowed one of the bedrooms for all of my stuff. This is because I don't have a garage. I'm not bitter about it. Honest.


This room doesn't contain any bed at all. But it contains all kind of other stuff. None of it in enough quantity to name the room. What do I mean? There are, for example, computers in it. More than 10 at last count. But I *don't* call it the computer room. This is for two reasons. First, there is other stuff in it, and second, it sounds too damn geeky.

This is what you see when you enter the room:



OK. You can see from the start there's a lot of stuff in there.

There are some computers. (Strangely enough, none of the bottles are from alcohol...)



Some more computers...



There are some really old computers, like this early 1980's Atari 800XL. (Perfect working order...)



There are more computers, but you get the picture (and the Girlie may not know about all of them...)

There's other stuff too, like radios...



OK, so there's an old computer on the shelf...

I have a lot of books




And, yes there are some computers on the shelves. There are other things too... ideo tapes, weapons, boxing gloves, protective headgear, and other stuff ...




I really should throw that bottle out.

I have a bookcase with comics, magazines, papers and such.



Oops, how did that old computer get in the bottom of the pic?


Sometimes, I fire up the old soldering iron and get some work done.



Anyway, there's a lot of stuff in here, right?

This includes a lot of wiring, for all my electrical stuff, the network for the house, some phone stuff, etc. Also, through no fault of mine, there may be some stuff on the floor.

When I'm in the room, I'm being anti-social, especially if the door is shut, as I may be planning terrorist acts, or some other misdeed. So I leave the door open. Which allows the pets access.

When we only had the Baz, He would come in and climb all over everything. As you may have noticed from some of the above pics, some of the stacks of stuff are very carefully balanced. A cat jumping from pile to pile does not assist me in keeping the room in order. Although a lot of the time, Basil just comes in to sleep under the desk.

Then we got Pheobe.




Firstly, the are many cable to be pulled and bitten. Also a lot of stuff may be on the floor. Pheob has discovered a fun new game. Grab something from of the floor, or low to the ground, and run. She can run fast.

I keep my shoes in a box under the desk. Pheobe likes shoes. You get the picture.



Dog grabs shoe.



Dog departs room at high speed, with stolen booty.

Having blagged said item, Pheobe then will either run back into the room, to taunt me, or hide it somewhere on the property. I can only wonder with dread what stuff the lawn-mower guy has come across...

As I said, She can move *damn* fast. Often you can't catch Her. So, you have to try psychology. Get the Dog to go after something more interesting. Ideally, this can be food. Unfortunately, the best results are obtained with fresh meat. And if I have a steak, I ain't giving it to the Dog. So, often, we use the Cat's meat. Basil is a fussy eater, he has wet and dry food. The dry food is a biscuit kinda thing, but for wet food , He prefers Jimbo's veal cat food. So does the Dog, although She's not normally fed it. Unless She nicks something I really want back. So I grab a hunk of Baz's food and wave it enticingly under Pheob's nose. At which point She drops what She stole, and I can retrieve it. I have seen the Cat watch, horrified, as His food is given to the Dog.

The other way is to distract Her with a plaything. The Dog prefers noisy things. I made the mistake of buying this.



This thing sqeaks. The more pressure you put on it, the higher-pitched the squeak. If the Dog has this in her jaws, and you are trying to get it from Her, windows three houses over could be cracking...

If the Dog is in a playful mood, She will bring this to you, to play "fetch". In this game, you throw the noisy item, and She brings it back, but doesn't give it to you. Instead, you are expected to tear it from Her death-grip and throw it away for another retrieval. We have discovered if you throw it out the window, for example from the bedrrom, Pheob has to run a long way to get it, and She tires faster.

As I was writing this very entry, Pheob was playing this game. I was drinking a bourbon (yay Woodstock!). I was throwing the squeaky-toy out the window, and She was running back in with it. Unfortunately, one throw bounced off the window, and the toy landed on the desk. Where the Dog leapt up to grab it, and knocked my can on the floor. The towel on the floor in picture below was soaking up the resulting mess.




At least neither beast has taken a dump in my room...