Neko has found her happy place, and unfortunately it's on the thick pile carpet in C's study where I work most of the day.
Neko has been expressly forbidden from going into any of the carpeted rooms here in Blair's Grove, but somehow she's managed to inch and sneak her way into the study. At first, C would catch her in here and glare at both of us balefully. I'd shoo Neko out, pretending she'd just arrived or that I hadn't noticed her there. But truthfully, there's something soothing about having a dog stretched out beside you while you work or write or play scrabble. C's rarely here in the daytime so I figured it would be Neko's little secret.
Once C caught on to our attempted deviousness, he brought in a rug for Neko to lie on. Sadly, Neko is not interested in parking her carcass on a dollar store rug. She prefers the carpet, the nice, grey, squishy, warm, expensive carpet. The one that will require severe steam cleaning eventually to remove all traces of her doggyness.
So, through sheer canine determination, Neko is now free to spend her slothful days in the study, head stuffed under the bed, body splayed out in varying degrees of weirdness across the carpet. And for most of the day, she seems content. But approximately 5 or 6 times a day, she has a bad dream. I've never known a dog that has such terrible dreams as she does. Her whole body twitches, her legs paddle and thrash spastically, her lips curl and her ears go backwards. She moans, woofs, yelps, growls, cries and basically makes me feel miserable until I pet her and say a few soothing words to snap her out of it. I can only assume these dreams are in fact nightmares, because the look on her face when I wake her up is one of dazed relief.
One has to wonder what it is dogs actually dream about. I can't imagine that dreams about rawhide or rotten groundhogs or even racoon encounters would cause her this much sleep strife. I guess I'll never know.
6 comments:
Did ya ever think maybe she's not dreaming but trying to get her head unstuck from under the bed?
And, um...how could you pretend not to notice her in the room--she's um, kinda obvious.
Great pic!
dogz dream of rabbits, rabbits and squirrels, and tormenting crows...
i wonder if neko is named after 'neko wafers', tanzi ??!!!
who the hell is neko wafers? is that some literary thing I'm supposed to get?
sigh.
I really gotta read more!
I was assuming that Neko was named after Neko Case?
I too try to figure out what my cat is dreaming, especially since she has probably never been on a single hunt in her entire lifetime.
Her nightmares are probably about me tripping over her in the dark, or maybe about sibling rivalry when she was a kitten, or about being chased around the basement by an unclean litterbox.
When she wakes up in the middle of a dream she "talks" excessively for a minute or two, just wandering around and bantering. It's like she's trying to tell me about the dream that I so rudely interrupted.
That's so interesting Muffy, I didn't know cats had dreams. We had cats all the time I was growing up, but I never once witnessed one dreaming, let alone trying to tell me about its dream...
And good guess, she is indeed partially named for Neko Case, but mostly because Neko is Japanese for cat and she had very cat-like habits as a puppy. (Yes, I like to psychologically torture my pets)
Neko wafers are awesome! Tanzi, read Gene's last poem posting more carefully...tsk tsk
Oh yes, Kim...at least MY cat dreams.
We have this ritual where I sit in a reclining chair, pull on an afghan, and read a book. She instantly jumps up, lies on my legs, and falls asleep.
More often than not I'm treated to a dreaming cat, which is usually much more interesting than the book I'm reading.
I didn't realize that "Neko" was Japanese for "cat!" Today's useful tidbit...
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