MOJO THE SILLY PUP
Doggone It, I Just Wanna Fit In
It was not a Peaceable Kingdom
When we brought home Mojo as a three-month-old puppy I’m not sure what we were expecting. Peace and harmony? Kitties snuggled in sleep against the furry white chest of our now sixty-pound Aussie-Collie mix?
Did we imagine this was going to be the embodiment of Edward Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom?
Anyone who has ever had cats or dogs will emphasize the importance of that first meeting when introducing a new pet into the household. We’ve adopted, rescued, raised, and fostered numerous animals over the years so we were sure this was something we could handle easily.
Delusions or naiveté, it doesn’t matter at this juncture, but let’s just state for the record: It Did Not Happen That Way.
The day Mojo came home with us we coaxed him out of the car and led him by his leash onto the carport. From there he was in full view of four or five of our cats, who regarded him suspiciously from their perches inside the sun room.
Sleepy-eyed and disoriented, our new puppy timidly surveyed his surroundings. From where he stood, it was a welcome change from the smells and the jarring noise of the animal shelter.
He surveyed the large fenced backyard filled with trees and carpeted by grass. A bowl of water was already set alongside a dish of puppy food. It looked like his life was getting ready to take a happy turn in the right direction. We felt confident this introduction was going to be a piece of cake.
Inside the sun room all nine felines had gathered and were assembled in various poses. As they watched distastefully through the glassed enclosure Mojo innocently crunched his kibble, lapped fresh water, and soaked up admiring attention from the two human Food Givers.
The felines were not at all pleased with what they saw. Ears flattened on a few while others swished their tails slowly and rhythmically like a cranky metronome.
I noticed Stormy, our alpha Maine Coon, had backed himself into a corner on the wrought iron table, and was crouching like a cartoon tiger getting ready to spring.
Mojo, unbothered by the inside cats, and overcome with unrestrained joy, finally emitted one loud and sharply punctuated bark of happiness.
Bedlam erupted in the sun room. The highest perched cat, Willie Morris, reacted to the bark — the first he’d ever heard up close — by rocketing straight up into the air as if launched from an ejector seat.
Around and below him fur of every color went flying. Cats streaked from the sun room with tails bushed up like bottle brushes while others crashed into the furniture and into each other.
Crouching Stormy suddenly uncoiled and leapt from the table to the ceiling windows, bouncing first against a glass pane and shattering it into a thousand shards, and then careened back onto the table from which he launched.
Amazingly no one was hurt.
Mojo stared at the carnage in awe, probably wondering what kind of creatures were these, sailing through the air noisily and causing the Food Givers to react with such dismay.
So much for our first introduction, something we smugly thought we’d pull off effortlessly, being the experienced pet-wrangles that we are.
So, how did it go after that inauspicious meet-and-greet? There are more stories to tell in due time but let’s just say for now, even though it wasn’t exactly the Peaceable Kingdom Edward Hicks envisioned, we haven’t had to replace any more sun room windows.
More stories about our ridiculous dog, Mojo and his sidekick Mooch.
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