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resource guarding crisis
Friday, April 13 2018
Today was springlike and warm for the first time since we got back from the Danube. Warm weather brings out all the accumulated stank of winter time, which goes unnoticed in the cold but starts to curdle and offgas once it becomes warm and humid. That hadn't actually started happening yet today when I noticed the severity of the laboratory cat piss situation. There is no litter box in the laboratory, but that doesn't stop the cats (and it's hard to say who is responsible, though I'm pretty sure Clarence is). I noticed that a plastic bin salvaged from the hospital during Gretchen's stay back in the fall was now full of yellow crystals, suggesting it resembled a litter box sufficiently for cats intent on doing the right thing. But then I noticed crystals caked on the floor and old shipping envelopes nearby. Fortunately, all the surfaces so contaminated were cleanable or disposable; no carpet had been involved. But cleaning it all up was not a trivial job and disposed me poorly towards the cats as I worked, particularly as they creeped around sniffing things, the behavior I assume that precedes their pissing on something (an act I rarely witness).
A multibox delivery of food (and perhaps litter) for both cats and dogs arrived from Chewy.com today, and there was light rain falling at the time, so I quickly brought them all into the front foyer. One of the boxes had sprung open, revealing the bagged contents inside, though I didn't think much of it. Later, though, I heard Neville the Dog engaging in resource guarding. Typically he'll hang out with something exciting until he tires of it and then he'll go somewhere else while continuing to monitor the exciting thing from a distance. When he hears or sees someone approaching the thing he's guarding, he jump up and run over, snarling the whole way. It's terrible behavior, but we've been unable to break him of it. So I went to see what was being guarded and found that he'd ripped a hole in an exposed bag of cat kibble and proceeded to eat from the resulting glory hole of deliciousness. I immediately emptied the bag into the cat food bin to remove it as a Neville nuisance, something he didn't try to stop me from doing. But then, for the rest of the day, he kept guarding a series of things that before hadn't much excited him. The first of these was a bone that has been in the house for weeks. When Gretchen saw him guarding it, she decided to make a teachable moment and so went to take it away. In an instant Neville reacted, biting her high on her belly and on one of her hands, causing injuries in both places and an agonizing bone-pain on the hand. What the hell was wrong with him? He's never escalated to such violence before. It immediately threw Gretchen into a funk. If Neville was going to be like this, a lot of the things we take for granted about our household can no longer be taken for granted.
Later this evening, Neville was upstairs on the bed with Ramona the Dog, evidently guarding a toy Ramona had found the other day in the forest (one that used to belong to one of Crazy Dave's dogs). Gretchen thought it best to get it away from him, but I didn't want to risk her getting bitten again. So I tossed a pillow over for her to use as a shield. When she went to grab it, Neville lunged and clamped down on her forearm, leaving several skin injuries and yet more agonizing bone bruises. This threw Gretchen into despair, and she began sobbing (partly from the pain, but also because of the shock and horror at the monster Neville had suddenly become). Ramona immediately came over to comfort Gretchen because she's the best, most empathetic dog ever. For his part, Neville was confused and went to lie down on the floor as if he wasn't responsible for the evening's crisis. Eventually he went into the teevee room and fell asleep embedded in a beanbag. There would be no resource guarding incidents tonight, but who knew what the future held? Meanwhile, I'd hidden both the toy and the bone high in the cat tree to keep them out of the household equation.
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