May

5

And then there were three

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“Let’s add a mini weiner dog to make everything more relaxed and chill.” — no one, ever

So this is Mabel!!!

This is how I introduced her on Instagram: Mabel is a miniature dachshund, a breed famously known for their reliable chill and obedience, loljk they are most definitely barky Pringle cans full of hilarity and stubborn mayhem! She is 2 and needed to be rehomed from a not-ideal situation and I was apparently looking for a way to add more stress, vet bills, and carpet cleaning to my life. Truly she is the sweetest, most playful, most adorable little peanut of a dog and Billy finds her greatly entertaining. I always liked to picture myself with a ridiculous small dog in my Caftan Years, and here we are! Mabel is excellent at tiny kisses, gentle chupacabra attack modes, WWE cat wrestling, meme-worthy side eyes, and adding joy to everything with her ecstatic wriggles and tippy-taps.

Mabel is a darling little dog and she is also completely bonkers, her whole personality is an exclamation mark. She loves cuddling but it is like holding a small otter on a large amount of methamphetamines, all wriggly caterpillar legs and darting tiny snoot. Everything is very! Exciting! to Mabel and I have been enjoying the deranged joyous enthusiasm directed at me over my every move.

(One thing about cats, even unusually doglike cats like Billy, they don’t really spend their time gassing you up, while a dog can be a wonderful source of dopamine simply for the fact that they visibly celebrate your existence at all times.)

She’s been home with me for about a week and a half, long enough to settle in, establish her territories, become Billy’s best playmate, and use up about half a bottle of Nature’s Miracle on the carpeting. Mabel’s potty situation beforehand involved being confined to a hardwood type area in an apartment and hoping for the best with potty pads, so we are essentially starting over from ground zero. She’ll go outside, but she’ll go inside as well, her field of fucks is barren when it comes to location. I’ve had her in a training boot camp type situation where she’s basically always leashed to me, in her crate, or being taken outside — and she has still managed to do her business everywhere she shouldn’t. Not only is she sneaky, but it is often straight up hard to tell when a very very short dog is having a restroom moment! Like, is she squatting, or is she just briefly paused in motion??? Oh. Puddle.

MISS MABEL DOG also came with some overly sensitive factory settings in the barking department, which I am addressing with a training collar. She is used to being corrected that way (I have one that just does vibration/noise, no shock) and it does stop her from getting into a frenzy of barking at house visitors! Ideally I would like her trained to respond to a “quiet” command but while she is very smart she is also very much driven by a nervous system that seems bigger than her actual body, so this tool is a good in-the-moment workaround.

The ongoing interactions between Billy and Mabel have been very interesting and funny to observe. They wrestle, chase each other, and generally act like siblings in the backseat driving everyone nuts: guys don’t make me pull over!! Since Mabel is often on a leash for quick potty outings, she goes tearing around with Billy in hot pursuit of the dangling lead, or they will hang out near me with Mabel goofing around and Billy fixated on Mabel’s ever-wagging tail.

I have one of those twisty stake things for the backyard with a lead line that they both can be clipped to in their respective harnesses, and I have to say that is quite a sight! The enormous lynxlike cat, the tiny ferret dog, sniffing around companiably and laying in the sun.

Real talk, I do sometimes feel like I kind of napalmed my easygoing life by answering the Facebook group post that led me to taking home this little peanut. Billy has become more clingy and yowly, I can’t go anywhere without at least one animal superglued to my side, I have to continually get Mabel out for potty breaks without breaking my ankle getting down the steps while trying to block the cat from escaping, I can’t take my eyes off Mabel in the house for one second without her happily taking a dump on the floor, Billy takes advantage of every distraction to get on counters and knock over lamps, everyone moans and whines if I go in the backyard by myself for a single second, someone is always stealing my socks and rooting through my jewelry drawer, someone is always underfoot, it is A LOT.

But now I am a single woman with a huge cat that looks like a mythical forest creature and a comically tiny sausage dog! I have entered a new era, here in my perfect yellow house, dingy carpets and all. Never lonely, never bored. Billy, Mabel, and me. I could never have imagined this, and yet if I had been able to, this is maybe just what I would have dreamed of.