A postcard from Puppy Four

I emailed the kennel in Cairo to find out how Puppy Four is doing. They sent me a postcard! It features a beach scene with an inset of Puppy Four, seemingly about to snooze on a grassy lawn.

At first, though, I thought they sent me the wrong photo. “That’s not Puppy Four!” I insisted to myself. And then I realized he’s become Gigantor Puppy since I last saw him a few weeks ago.

The boys loved the postcard. Here’s the photo part, just for you:

Room with a view? Deluxe a/c?

Puppy Four has a vacation coming up. Or at least that’s what the boys think. Poor guy is going to a kennel for about a month while we’re out of town. Isn’t that terrible? But with the move happening while we’re away, I just don’t know what else to do. He’s staying at the nicer kennel in the area, and he does get at least three or four walks a day, so I hope it won’t be too awful for him. Actually, with three walks a day, he should be fine… right?

But, I have a choice to make. Should Puppy Four stay in the indoor air conditioned kennel? Or in an outdoor kennel “with an outside run overlooking the garden”? The outdoor kennel sounds hot to me, but it’s also 10LE (about $1.75) more a day, so I guess it’s nicer. So, readers, where would you rather stay?

Speaking of Puppy Four… he and the boys have been playing together a lot lately. It’s really funny to watch. The boys will try to get the pup to chase them, and then they dash to the couch and jump up as if they’re escaping some vicious beast. And then the puppy runs into the kitchen to see if any food has been added to his dish in the last minute or so. Then he comes out, and the boys will try to get him to chase them, and so on.

Bug is sometimes a bit intimidated by it all, because he initiates rough play and then can’t quite handle it.

But Giggle really loves the game. He told me tonight that the puppy is really funny. And they both love to feed him. Sometimes they dump about four cups of dog food and a pint of milk into his bowl.

The puppy’s favorite chew toy continues to be my arm. He loves to gnaw on me. And pull on my clothes. So he’s fitting right in.

On the move

I just learned some great news: the Four family will be moving to a ground-floor flat at Choice B. This is the building with a small yard and a great location. I had heard the ground-floor apartment was small, but found out it has three bedrooms, which is plenty of space for us (the boys share a room). Plus instead of a balcony, we’ll have a small, private, walled outdoor patio, and, because we’re on the ground floor, we’ll have easy access to the shared yard outside.

So this is great for Mr. Four’s knees, great for the boys to play and get to school, great for me for commuting, and since it’s been a hassle to house train a pup from the seventh floor, great for Archie and his long-term residence with the Fours.

Of course, we haven’t actually seen this place. We might consider asking the current tenant if we could stop by, but she’s a widow whose husband worked for my employer until last November. Seems a tad insensitive to ask to check out her house. Right?

We’re not sure when we’ll move. The housing office is waiting to hear when the apartment will be empty, and they’ll want us to move as soon as possible after that. As always, I will keep you posted.

Meanwhile, I’m still very interesting in your feedback on Bug’s lungs.

Pupdate 3: Puppy pretends to nap

We had a busy weekend, and on Saturday, we told the boys they needed to nap. They found this an unreasonable request and insisted they’d nap only if they could do so on the living room floor. So they set themselves up with blankets and crashed out. Mr. Four worked on some sodoku and even Puppy Four joined in the naptime fun.

But Puppy Four wasn’t really asleep. He was chewing on the carpet! He’s too young to do much damage, but he seems also to enjoy yanking the arm covers off of the couch and chair, so upholstery repair may be in our future (and may I again say, thank you, employer, for providing us with furniture that you’ll also re-upholster eventually!).

The puppy’s legs grew approximately ten inches while we were in Dahab. He’s becoming more mischievous, but he’s still very cautious around people, even us. He scares easily, similar to our Old Hound.

Cairo is full of dogs that look just like Puppy Four.

And yes, his ears are like that pretty much all the time.

Back in Cairo

We’re back from a fantastic vacation. I left off blogging right before our trip to St. Catherine’s Monastery, which was great. The church itself is awe-inspiring, really old and dramatic and lovely. And on a hot day, the mountains were a nice cool break from the beach. Though of course we dove into the pool about two minutes after getting back to our hotel.

I’ll blog more about our trip once I get the photos loaded (which will probably take forever, as always; it’s not the downloading but the organizing and uploading which kills me). But the rest of the week also included lots of snorkeling with some colorful fish along with some pool side adventures. The kids ended up playing with some new friends from the UK, Germany, and France (including the kids of someone prominent enough to have a Wikipedia entry, which of course I didn’t know but only suspected until I got home and googled him).

Today is Easter here in Egypt, for Coptic Christians. It’s also Easter for Ethiopian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Christians. So Happy Easter to you easterners.

Tomorrow, Monday, is Shem El Nessim, the Egyptian spring celebration. I’ll learn more about it and then pass along my wisdom to you. But it does mean I have tomorrow off, so I’ll go to the kennel and retrieve the pup, who, as the boys have been saying, has been on vacation with other dogs (okay, that’s what I told them). I hope he hasn’t been too traumatized by it all.

On Tuesday, Mr. Four starts his new job!

And since Thursday is the Egyptian Labor Day, I only have two days of work this week. Not bad for the first week back after a vacation.

We did get some sad news tonight: our old cat, the Jekyll/Hyde kitty, who has been living with my mom since last summer, died yesterday. By all accounts, she had become mostly a Hyde kitty and had left her biting, grouchy ways behind, and my mom, previously an avowed cat-disliker, really fell for her. My poor mom–over the past few years, she’s taken in three pets from my sister and me and overseen the death of two (who were old; my mom is not a pet serial killer).

A year ago Mr. Four and I had had five pets, three dogs and two cats. Both cats and one dog died from July to yesterday. They were all old and sick, but still.

The other two dogs are with other folks now (including one with my mom) and seemingly in good health for now.

We’ve also managed to lose a cat (and I don’t mean through death) here in Egypt. Maybe we’re bad news for animals.

Anyway, I’m not sure if I’ll even tell the boys about the Jekyll/Hyde kitty. Of course they both know her and remember her well. But Bug in particular has been extra attentive to death issues lately. When we went to St. Catherine’s, Giggle and Bug expressed an interest in playing with Moses (probably because I described him as an original super hero). We said they couldn’t play with Moses (or “Noses,” according to Bug), because he wasn’t there, he died a long time ago. So all day we heard “Noses died.” This is the same as happened after Iggy the cat died here in Egypt. And the same with after the Hound died last summer. Any advice on this one, folks?

Meantime, I have apparently resumed my night owl ways now that I’m back in Cairo. More soon, I promise. Now I need to go to bed and sleep off this vacation.

Pupdate 2: Puppy in the Neighborhood

The puppy is still here and doing well. He’s growing fast, straight up, I think, as his legs appear longer and lankier every day. He could eat a horse (but mostly sticks to puppy food and rawhide). Most importantly, we’re seeing more of the puppy in him. Sometimes he runs around in crazy circles, and other times he likes to nibble on the edge of shoes, which, so far, is mostly cute because he can’t really do any damage yet.

He’s not a big tail wagger, and he’s still pretty mellow, so he’s more like puppy-lite.

Having the pup around has changed some of our patterns. Most days, after dinner, the boys and I take the puppy downstairs to the patches of lawn in front of our building. We tried walking him a couple of times, but he’s still too young to walk well on the leash, and the streets here are tough for leash training. So we’re content, for now, with the (so-called) garden.

Hanging out in the front of the building has meant that I’ve met more of my neighbors. And the boys have befriended a family from a few buildings down. The dad is a neighborhood bowab (a doorman/superintendent combo), and when they kids aren’t in school, they just hang out. So they like seeing my kids too.

They range in age from 3 to 12 years, four kids all together, all very friendly and very respectful. The boys particularly love O, who is 7, though originally I took him for 5 as he’s smaller than Giggle. Even without more than a few common words, they play great together.

We had the four kids all up to our apartment one night last week, and it was the easiest bunch of kids ever. Last weekend, we took three of the kids (O had disappeared with a friend into the neighborhood) and the kids’ mom to our neighborhood club with the pool. The mom, who does speak some English, said it was a huge treat because the kids usually don’t get to go anywhere.

The family is from Luxor in southern/Upper Egypt. They own two apartments down there, which are for the boys when they get married. The older daughter is 12, a very nice girl, and the mom said she’ll get married at age 14. Whoa.

So all this because of the pup. Unfortunately, Mr. Four still doesn’t want to keep him. I do (natch). Especially now that he’s getting stronger and healthier and we’re having more fun with him. But, we we’re looking for a new home for him since I’m not the one at home most of the time.

So that’s the latest on the pup.

Meanwhile…

A few weeks ago, when we went to Wadi Digla, we apparently left the door of our apartment ajar. It was wide open when we got home, with nothing amiss… except no cat.

We posted signs around the building, only to hear her mewing in the stairway, a few floors up, a couple of days later. We suspect she wandered out exploring and got confused since all the floors look the same. She was hungry and tired but otherwise seemed fine.

All was well until last week. As we were leaving for the beach, we couldn’t find her again. This time we wonder if it’s intentional. Maybe she escaped our house to escape the pup?