Like a rockstar....

........I have an entourage. However, mine does not include a manager in reflective sunglasses or a clutch of roadies with do rags around their heads..... mine is more low key and countrified.

Everywhere I go, indoors or out, I am always accompanied by anywhere from one to three black and white dogs. Supposing I sit down in the creaky old chair here at the computer. Thump, thud, clunk, three sets of border collie elbows hit the floor. Heads curl into tails and a chorus of snores begins. (Okay I know I am boring, but come on guys....). I don't know what they think I am going to get up to if they let me out of their sight, but they sure are afraid that they are going to miss something.

Someone always has one eye open under all that snoozing fur. If the washer stops cycling and I rise to hang up laundry, it's a three-dog stretch, then they all lumber after me out to the pantry. And into the parlor where my five (count 'em, five) sets of laundry bars reside. They all stand in the door way watching me hang up towels and blue jeans, tails gently waving, until I head back out to the next thing.

Nick is youngest and good about staying out from under my feet. Not so much the old dogs especially Mike. They have discovered that if they hem me in with slumbering bodies they will not, despite all those blindness and deafness issues, be left behind when I move on. Oh, they may get stepped on. They may hear some language not fit for tender canine ears, but they won't miss the mommy train.

On one hand it drives me crazy and causes me to miss a lot of phone calls (hard to get to the phone through the scrimmage of awakening canines.) On the other hand, it feels right to be surrounded by dogs...I am after all a dog person, through and through. A canine escort is thus not a bad thing right?

Of late my road crew has a new member. He can only be out of his personal dog crate when Nick is outside in his run, as Nick likes members of his species.
With ketchup.
But when Nick is out he is free to prowl.

Elvis is a cat (AKA Mr. Kitty, or Monsieur le Chat ).
However, he seems to have decided that he is a dog.
He fetches.
He catches things you throw to him.
He hunts and eats flies (one of Gael's favorite pastimes in younger days).
He understands words (especially the word "can" in reference to ones full of cat food).
He stops doing bad things when told to. (He even knows when he is doing a bad thing and stares at me slyly while extending claws ever so tenderly toward my chair. If he sees me look up he withdraws the claws and grins.)

He also follows me from room to room, plopping down among the dogs with just as loud a thump whenever I stop. I find that I enjoy his company as much as I do theirs. This is puzzling to me. I have not liked cats much since I was a kid when anything with fur, feathers, scales, claws or warty skin was wondrous fine and fair to me. I tolerate them, but you won't catch me picking them up to pet them. Feeding them. Talking to them. Or any of that mushy cat person stuff.

However, as we speak he is lying near me ( on an antique chair he knows full well is off limits), just a little away from the dog-rug surrounding the chair. I swear he isn't a cat...he is a dog in disguise. I mean, I voluntarily buy those darned cans he loves so much....somebody stop me.