Carbon-Based Non-Humans

Along with my two batches of children, we also have two batches of animals... two dogs and two cats. I won't include the fish as they are more closely compared to décor than pets. Like the kiddos, the animals are complete opposites from one another. The dogs… Charlie and Sienna. Charlie is a 120-pound golden retriever; Sienna is a 40-pound dachshund/german-shepherd mix (I know, weird). Sienna is bundle of energy and constantly bouncing around, and she is my escape artist. Charlie is a little older and has a bad hip, so he is slower to move. When they play chase, it’s basically Sienna running as fast as she can in a figure-eight while Charlie stands in the middle of the crossroad waiting for her to zip by. He just reaches out to try to get her and doesn’t move his feet. I truly believe he thinks he will actually catch her one day using this method. He’s either smart enough to not try, or too stupid to realize his method isn’t working. I choose to believe he is smart. Now the cats… Sophie and Daphne. Sophie is the anti-social one, just a fat snob. Most people don’t even realize that we had that cat because she never really comes downstairs. She is Boog's cat and knows it. The rest of us are just annoyances to her. Whenever we see her downstairs, our first thought is something is wrong. Daphne is the complete opposite of Sophie. Daphne is a lovable, cuddly, purring kitty that cannot seem to get enough us. She is constantly following us around and sits either right next to us or right on top of us. She even sleeps between my pillow and my Hubs’ pillow. Even though I love her best (I’m not sure if you could tell), she seems to prefer Hubs. It’s probably because he is the primary caretaker of the animals, where I am more like the grandma. I love them all, but really just want to admire and cuddle with them without actually having any actual responsibility. He cleans up the pee from little accidents, feeds them every day, picks up dog poop in the backyard, takes them to the vet, etc. I am not sure what I would do without my zookeeper. It allows me to enjoy the animals without having to do much of anything. And I want to make sure that he knows how much it is appreciated. All of us humans in the house get to enjoy the non-humans thanks to his hard work. Thank you, Darlin'.