Now that I work from home and spend the majority of my time upstairs, I was feeling guilty about leaving the dogs on their own for most of the day. Our dogs have never been allowed on the top floor of our house as they make the small pets nervous and two of our cats, Charlie and Indie never seemed to socialize with the dogs properly. A lot of this I'm sure is because Genevieve has always been incredibly high strung and would chase them excitedly when they would come around.
I slowly began to put this plan in action about a month ago when I moved the cat litterboxes down to the laundry room. I didn't do this to be mean but I wanted to force the cats to interact a bit with the dogs. I also wanted the dogs to get used to the cats so they wouldn't be so excited when one suddenly turned up. I also was tired of all of my clean laundry going right in to a linen closet that also contained a litterbox! Yuck!
The litterbox trick worked perfectly and we started to see Charlie and Indie come around a lot more. In the evenings, Charlie has even jumped up on the couch for a cuddle with me! We've never had this issue with our other cat Cali as she has kept the dogs in line right from the beginning!
So since everything seemed to be going according to plan it was time to give the dogs access to the top floor. I made a new spot for the cat's dishes in the bunny room and put the baby gate up there. That way the dogs don't have access to any of the small pets or the cat's food. Then I went about my day.
A few minutes later Murray made his way up the stairs. He had a quick look around, saw me in the office and settled in to a spot near my desk.
I'm not sure what Genevieve had been up to (I'm sure she was busy causing some kind of trouble) but she didn't show up for about a half hour or so. Of course her tail really started to swing when she realized she was being allowed in forbidden territory. Unlike her counterpart, she had to get in to everything!
There were, of course, bonuses to having Genevieve upstairs like if your feet were cold she would bring you some socks. They might be covered in dog slobber and have holes in them by the time they made it to you but it's the thought that counts right? Or one morning she even brought me an entire outfit! How thoughtful! And just in case the temperature dropped 20 degrees over the course of the day, you could always count on Genevieve to bring you a blanket or two.
Some days it seemed, they thought the extra space they'd been given was so they could have a good tussle!
And of course the only way to get Genevieve to settle down, was to let her up on the bed. Hubby and I had agreed that if the dogs were to come upstairs they were not allowed on the beds. They already had the couches and we didn't want our bedsheets smelling like doggies. Well of course that's the only place that Genevieve would behave! I resorted to letting them have the spare bed only.
They both seemed content with this new agreement!
And my plan was working! One afternoon I took a coffee break and found Genevieve laying on our bedroom floor with Indie only a few feet behind her!
And another afternoon I was plugging away on the sewing machine when Charlie jumped over Murray and made herself comfy on the bed!
They've seemed really happy this week.
And how can you get mad at a face like that?
