Well, we finally got through escrow hell and have moved into a community in the 805, one which we have been desiring since they were built in 2004. We’ve been living here for less than a week but have already apparently ruffled some feathers regarding our Aussie-Doodle dog Sydney and her “nonstop” barking.
Mind you, at our previous residence, we put Sydney outside in the backyard during the day when we went to work. Never had one complaint in seven years. Generally, she only barks at people when they come to the house.
At our new digs, we went with the same feed-the-dog-and-put-the-dog-outside-and-go-to-work morning routine believing that Sydney would be fine in the new place. Well, apparently not, at least, according to someone in the community who has chosen to hide their identity.
On Tuesday November 4, there was an envelope on the patio that someone had tossed over the fence, with “C’Mon, Man!” hand-written with a felt tip marking pen on the outside. Inside the envelope was a printed note with the following verbatim message duplicated in bold 48-point font here for authenticity:
Your dog started barking at 5:30 this morning and never came up for Air. You need to do something about that please. 5:30 in the morning nonstop!!!!!!! it’s now going on hour three
Yeah, lots of yelling and anger there plus some bad grammar and punctuation, but they did say please so there is a razor thin level of politeness. No knock on the door; no name; no phone number; no address; no discourse between adults—just pure rage. Kim didn’t leave for work until 6:30 that morning while Sydney was outside, and Sydney didn’t bark at all, so that first point is obviously a fabrication. We’re not here to piss anybody off, so we pivoted (as one should in these types of situations) and changed Sydney’s feeding schedule and kept her in the house during the day for the last two days.
However, on Thursday, November 6, there was a notice from the city’s “Animal Safety Licensing” division hanging on the front doorknob with two of the three boxes checked and a few lines underlined by hand to emphasize something of great importance:
☒ An officer of the Animal Safety called today regarding a complaint that a dog or dogs living at the above address are creating a noise disturbance in violation of City ordinance. We request you cooperation in observing the provisions of the City Code Chapter 5, Article 1, Section 5-2, Subsection (A) 7, which states: The utterance of barks, cries, whines or other sounds of any household pet which are so loud, so frequent and continued over so long a period of time as to unreasonably disturb the peace and quiet of two or more unrelated residences.
Failure to comply in reducing the animal noise could result in an administrative hearing to determine whether the action of the animal(s) constitutes a public nuisance.
☒ ANIMAL LICENSE VIOLATION (Chapter 5, Sec. 5.55)
“Every person who owns a dog or cat over the age of four months…shall obtain a current license and license tag…Any person who violates this section is guilty of an infraction.”
You must comply and license the animal by 11/16/2025.
C’mon, man! Now this person has called the K9 cops on us too, great. They didn’t even have the courage to file a complaint with the HOA first like a rational, reasonable person would, I think, because they don’t want to be identified. Granted I already have a bone to pick with petty money grabbing city ordinances like animal licensing, but one must abide to avoid further complications.
I’ll have to admit that I love the idea that Sydney was barking at the Animal Safety officer the entire time that he/she was standing at the door filling out the complaint: It would be sort of poetic.
Some research on animal licensing in our zip code indicated that we have 30-days to get licenses for our pets, so it’s clear to me that the Animal Safety stooge, er, officer, either doesn’t know the law or is openly harassing us.
Anyway, this anonymous coward person is either an old, bitter, retired crank, or a snooty Karen type with nothing better to do than stir things up between neighbors.
Either way, I will do my best to be polite if I ever do meet him or her (for the time being, anyway). The problem with anonymous cowards is that they are very good at being anonymous cowards for they have been practicing the skill their entire life.
Personally, I have never been very good at being intentionally anonymous. I prefer a spoken face-to-face kinetic conversation where voice tone and body language become part of the open two-way communication between adults. These additional queues are more easily interpreted as either friendly, neutral, or openly hostile. You’ll succinctly know how things stand communicating this way.
Anonymity, however, is the polar opposite of a face-to-face conversation. By design it is a one-way communication method—one that makes it all too easy to completely misinterpret someone’s intent as they conceal who they are. They are ghosts. My imagination tends to quickly run wild…and dark. In other words, this anonymity is a chickenshit method of communication.
Given the opportunity, someone might anonymously deflate all four tires of someone else’s vehicle.
During my post-lunch walk today I saw a woman walking an outwardly spoiled Yorkshire Terrier on a leash while also pushing a fancy pet stroller. You know the kind; fresh groomed cut; shiny white fangs; ribbons and bows; blingy designer collar; claws painted fire-engine red. Remember that I’m writing about the dog here, not the woman.
Seeing that dog immediately transported me back to when my Aunt Lois’ pampered Yorkie, Coco, ran up from behind me and viciously bit me on my right Achilles tendon for no reason. It was a completely unprovoked attack. I was thirteen years old, and the injury hobbled me a little bit and so I limped around for a few days afterward looking like some dumbass poor suburban white boy trying to emulate the homeboy street walk of a hardcore inner-city gangbanger.
It’s strange how a mundane observation like seeing that Yorkie can immediately trigger an unpleasant experience from decades past. It also occurred to me how ridiculous it was that a little dog could be a PTSD inducing monster for a grown man. Coco’s bite was the first but certainly not the last dog bite I would ever receive from a lapdog, but the embarrassment of getting victimized by that spoiled little dog still haunts me, and although punting Coco across the room did flash across my mind at the time, retaliation was not an option because my Uncle Benny was standing right next to Aunt Lois with a half-crooked smile. It was as if he was saying, “Welcome to my world, kid.”
I had a best friend named Mark Flaata who lived on the corner of Cartwright Avenue and Chandler Blvd in North Hollywood, which was only a couple of blocks west from the apartment I was living in with my mom and siblings which was near Cahuenga Blvd and Chandler. Mark’s mom ran a small business named Showtime Kennels out of the house. The red and white sign on the corner of the property read:
Mark apparently held an unpaid intern position with Showtime Kennels management that could best be described as Kennel Technician III, which involved the following dog kennel related maintenance tasks:
Pick up the empty food bowls. Wash the empty food bowls. Scoop up the dog poop. Hose out the pee. Fill the water bowls. Feed all the dogs.
He alternated days with his brother Alan, and Mark was not allowed to go around terrorizing the neighborhood with me until his chores were done, so I volunteered to help so I could get him out on parole early. This was my apprenticeship phase of learning how to work with all of the cute pampered AKC (America Kennel Club) certified four-legged savages that you can imagine. I believe that you could have called my position, Kennel Technician Lackey I.
Mark taught me the ropes and I was a quick study. The three most important things were #1: Do not let a dog escape, and #2: Do not get the dogs wet while hosing out their dog run, and #3: DO NOT EVER turn your back on the dogs while inside or exiting the kennel or they will almost certainly bite you. I believe that #3 should have been #1 because it was unquestionably the most hazardous part of the job, but I wasn’t willing to go to Showtime Kennels management to file a grievance.
As it turned out, Showtime Kennels is where I learned to truly fear the small breed dogs like Maltese, Pekingese, Phalene, Pomeranian, Shih Tzu, and my least favorite, Yorkshire Terrier. These were neurotic, yappy, compact, savage little beasts, and even though I was helping Mark feed them their yummy horse meat soup with a generous scoop of kibble (in the exact proportions based on the size of the dog, of course), they barked, snarled, and gnashed their teeth at me more often than not. You’d think we’d be friends, but this was never the case: I was their eternal foe and perpetually on the menu.
Whenever rule #3 slipped my mind, sometimes the gnashing teeth found themselves embedded into my ankle or sometimes my lower calf if the little devil put in some extra effort and lunged a little bit. This was way back in the 70’s so there weren’t any emergency room visits or filing of personal injury lawsuits through the likes of the Larry H Parker law firm; it was simply a life lesson for volunteering in general. I’ll leave it at that. Anyway, a little swab of witch hazel and some gauze and a strip of duct tape over the bite wound, and I was good as new.
You might ask: But what about getting rabies? This was highly unlikely because most of these animals were AKC certified purebred breeding and show dogs, and they lived a life in the lap of luxury exclusively indoors, insulated from the outside world (much like a modern-day celebrity) so there was practically zero chance of ever getting rabies from them because these dogs were never, ever allowed to fraternize with the mutts or the squirrels or the cats or the rats in the neighborhood.
The usual feeding routine was that before we started, we’d blast Emerson Lake & Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery on the old beater Hi-Fi system in the garage and smoke a little bit of weed to get primed up. It helped me relax and allay the fear of getting chomped on (again) by someone’s precious little ill-mannered and extremely unpredictable lapdog.
When feeding time came around, the dogs sensed it, and the anticipation was palpable as we filled the bowls and loaded them onto a cart to roll down the dog run. The dogs would start barking and banging against the chain-link gates of their kennels in an almost unbearable cacophony, and this is why we blasted ELP on the stereo.
Some dogs had a very rhythmic chain-link gate pounding routine that went like this:
They would stand on all fours on the concrete deck about a foot away from the gate, bark three times at the sky, lunge at the gate with their front paws to make the gate rattle, bark three more times through the fence, drop back to the deck, reposition, and repeat.
Some dogs would run around in a circle rapidly two or three times, lunge the gate and bark five times, rest, bark five more times, drop, rest, and repeat. I think the rest was so they could catch their breath because they got gassed out from the overly enthusiastic barking due to their tiny lungs.
Other dogs were much more obnoxious and would stand on their hind legs with their front paws against the chain-link gate and rattle the gate with the rhythm of their unrelenting barking. Think of this as a dog bark synchronized with the metallic rattle of a slightly loose chain-link gate. Charming.
One of my feeding hacks was to open the gate just wide enough for the food bowl to squeeze through—strategically placing the metal bowl between the gnashing teeth of a mean dog and my quivering hand—and then slide the metal bowl across the concrete deck with a flick of my wrist as you would toss a Frisbee. I was able to develop some impressive accuracy and get the bowl to stop exactly where I wanted it, which was at the back of the dog run just in front of the doghouse. This would also get the menacing little dog to chase the bowl down and put some distance between us. The grating sound of the metallic bowl sliding across the slightly abrasive concrete deck is something that I’ll never forget.
While the dogs ate, the din of the kennel dropped dramatically for about thirty-seconds, and the only sounds you could hear were the metal buckles of their dog collars banging against the metal food bowl, and the chomping and the crunching and the gulping of the food. It amazed me how quickly these little monsters could woof down their food. I’d bet a dozen of them could finish me off in five minutes—like furry little land piranhas.
I’ll also never forget the yelps and the remarkable blue streak of expletives flying out of my mouth whenever I forgot rule #3 and felt the sharp, immediate pain of small canine teeth embedding themselves into my flesh from behind…again. Over and over, I had to fight back the urge to punt the perpetually angry little dogs over the fence onto Chandler Blvd and into the unknown suburban landscape. That would have been mean and inhumane, right? Yeah, right.
I never counted how many times I was bitten, nor tracked the breed-to-bite ratio—although I’d guess Yorkie’s would rank #1—but it was definitely more than enough to last several lifetimes.
If nothing else, being a volunteer Kennel Technician Lackey taught me one thing: Little dogs simply cannot ever be trusted.
Now you’ll understand why I flinch and break into a cold sweat whenever a small dog starts barking.
BANG-BANG-BANG! – down came the gavel with an overly enthusiastic force during the last legislative session of the year. “H. R. 11,776 2050, the TAIL (Taxing Animal’s Innate Look) Tax has passed with a supermajority vote; this session is adjourned.” And just like that, another expensive, intrusive new tax was imposed upon the people virtually out of thin air, and the formerly considered untouchable direct taxation upon people’s pets was quickly – even eagerly – signed into law by the president. These legislators have zero restraint and are perpetually scheming for new taxes needed to continue funding the ever-expanding Government Industrial Complex, which, by 2050, knows no boundaries. And so, the giant sucking maw of government greed, power, and corruption continued unabated.
As the dissenting nay voters stormed out of the chamber, the minority leader by the name of O’Keefe verbally warned his colleagues, “The citizens of this country will not tolerate this egregious, pernicious, and arbitrary tax on their beloved pets. We should be voting to repeal taxes like this instead of creating new ones! This TAIL tax will be the final straw, and the people will not tolerate it – mark my words!”
The TAIL tax law went into effect on January 1, 2051, and was retroactive for the 2050 tax year.
Unfortunately, this new TAIL tax did not really surprise anyone, after all, by 2049 everything else had already been levied a tax. People were now paying taxes on everything consumable (the list of which is too long and tedious to put down here, but believe me when I say everything), plus other ridiculous taxes like a personal carbon footprint tax as assessed by how much CO2 gas a person emits while breathing, how much rainwater and sunlight falls on their property, how many miles they drive, a per square toilet paper tax (that always spikes during cold and flu season), a keyboard keystroke tax (which always spikes during a breaking news story), a per-email tax, social media account taxes, a bodyweight tax (which is always up and down), a carbohydrate tax, condom tax, per brick tax, phone minute use tax, ice cube tax, firewood tax, a plant and garden tax, grass clipping tax, yard trimming tax, a per tooth tax (rumored to have triggered a massive spike in tooth extractions), fingernail and toenail trimmings taxes, earwax tax, haircut tax, dog poop tax, cat poop tax, human poop tax, toilet tax, fork, spoon, and knife taxes, a sleep tax, a snore tax, flatulence tax (which always spikes on Cinco de Mayo), a per-page book tax, a sporting goods tax, a facial hair tax (both men and women – because equality!) the full list of absurd taxes just goes on and on – let your imagination run wild and you’ll be right! The tax rate was already approaching 80% and rising, mostly to pay for the ever-expanding $100 trillion-dollar federal debt.
In essence, the politicians were perpetually scheming and engaging in financially punishing people simply for being human in order to fund the out-of-control government spending. Absolutely nothing was sacred anymore (not that anything ever actually was sacred to begin with, in the literal term anyway). The government even forced people to install cameras and toilet seat sensors and all manner of environmental sensors in and around their homes and yards and in their cars and trucks to track all of this stuff, all at the taxpayers’ expense, of course.
Naturally, many of the tax revenue estimates made by the bureaucracy in Washington DC were entirely wrong, hence the ongoing assault on the taxpayer for more and more of their money, after all, someone has to pay for all of the “free” stuff doled out by the government. Sadly, the people were complicit; they had capitulated because they would rather stay out of a dark, dank federal prison and enjoy what little liberty and freedom and money that they had left on the outside than to rebel against it and end up on the inside of one. All of the politicians knew this, and they used it to their maximum advantage.
Filing the tax returns for all of these new taxes not only costs far more money, it takes four times as much time – proving once again that the government doesn’t care about using up your time as they see fit – but also the punitive punishment administered by the government for getting it wrong will directly result in the seizing of all assets plus jail time, so people are always in fear of an audit. Nowadays, there are more heart attacks during tax season than there are during daylight savings time changes in the spring and the fall, the previous recordholders. “Death by a thousand taxes,” was no longer just a metaphor.
When Mark Armstrong heard the news about this new TAIL tax, he dropped his cup of coffee onto the floor, which made all of his half-dozen or so rescue dogs and cats temporarily scatter from the kitchen where he was standing. As Mark was cleaning up the mess, his pets slowly started returning to the kitchen to see what was going on, and his favorite Pomeranian, Zea, started licking up the whiskey-tinged coffee from the floor. “Don’t’ worry guys,” Mark said to his beloved pets, “I’ll figure out a way to come up with the extra TAIL Tax money.”
Then he stood up and looked out of the kitchen window across the expanse of his hilly, tree studded, hundred-acre property located somewhere east of Podunk where he had other rescue dogs and cats housed in his barn and outbuildings all living very comfortable lives. There were about twenty-five dogs and cats in all. This new TAIL Tax was going to cost him thousands of extra dollars per year – money that he simply didn’t have – which would ultimately bankrupt him. Unfortunately, Mark was a retiree on a pension that he was barely scraping by on, and any new expense – especially involuntary ones imposed by the government – were an absolute threat to his livelihood. He bristled at the thought of another new, unfair, idiotic tax.
Mark also felt deeply in his heart that the government had gone too far this time, and he simply was not going to take it sitting down – he was not going to go along with this death by ten-thousand taxes madness imposed upon the people by the faceless, heartless, mindless bureaucrats in DC. In fact, an intense feeling of rebellion began to swell up in him; one that he could not suppress – he determined at that moment that the time for a tax war had come. But before engaging in a battle with the federal government Leviathan, he wisely decided to check into the language of the new law so that he could better develop some rules for engagement.
Notably, “A $50 per inch annual TAIL tax will be assessed on any cat or dog living within the household, the length of which shall be measured from the anus to the tip of the tail, including the fur, rounding up to the next one-quarter of an inch. All farm animals will be excluded.” He did some quick math in his head; this new TAIL tax was going to cost him approximately $30K per year, and there was no way he could pay it. Then he had a dark thought cross his mind that maybe this law was not really about a new tax, rather, it was a law designed to allow for more civil asset forfeitures because people won’t be able to pay their tax bills, giving the government more ownership and control over private property. This thought sent a chill down his spine, and he was not going to give up his ranch without a fight, even if it killed him.
From reading the entire text of the new law, Mark ascertained the following items which he could use in his TAIL Tax war:
The government was clearly attempting to also get a headcount of the dogs and cats that were living amongst the population, most likely for another tax scheme. Mark reasoned to himself, “And this is why I never fill out the census: The government will use the information provided against me.”
The term(s) of “within the household,” were not clarified, so there was a gray area for an indoor/outdoor pet, like a cat, for example, and whether there was an exemption for a pet that spent more time outdoors than indoors.
Specific language for dogs and cats not living “within the household” was missing from the law entirely, either by design or possibly by mistake, leaving room for interpretation.
There was no language included in the text of the law preventing tail docking or caudectomy, vis-à-vis, removal of the tail, and although this would be an extreme tax avoidance measure, certainly, some people would do it.
There was also some darker text within the law that enraged Mark: “Any citizen that underreports the headcount of the pets living within the household will be fined $50,000 and sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 6–months in jail, and the pets intentionally excluded from the tax return will be taken into custody and a fine of $100 per day will be assessed. At 90-days, if the fine is not paid in full, the animal in question will be destroyed. Financing options are available.”
“Those greedy, immoral, power-hungry bastards! ‘Pay us, or the dog gets it?’ It is now painfully obvious that the government will never stop their assault on the taxpayers unless we force them to stop! Guys: We must be the tip of the spear!” Mark exclaimed to his audience of house pets.
Mark sent a letter to his congressman, eloquently explaining his financial situation and how the TAIL tax was going to bankrupt him. There was no reply.
Mark sent a letter to the President, eloquently explaining his financial situation and how the TAIL tax was going to force him to sell his property. There was no reply.
Mark emailed the local news station, eloquently explaining the financial implications and how the TAIL tax was going to bankrupt many people. There was no reply.
Fuming over being ignored by the politicians and the media and facing financial ruin, Mark decided to make a TikTok video using clips of his rescue animals and house pets and explaining the TAIL tax law and how it allowed for the government to seize and destroy peoples pets and levy heavy fines against them, and it must be stopped by any means. This, fortunately, got the people’s attention. On day 1, he got a hundred views. By day 3, there were 10,000 views. By the end of the week, the video had reached 1,000,000 views and followers. The word was getting out. Zea was the new darling of the Internet. The politicians were getting flooded with phone calls, letters, and emails demanding them to repeal the TAIL tax. They did not budge.
In one protest, a few dozen people dumped a truckload of fake animal tails in front of the White House while holding up a banner that said, “NO TAIL TAX!” The crude, ineloquent message hinted that the people would cut off their pets tails in rebellion to avoid the new tax. This only got national news coverage after the capitol police arrived in force in full riot gear and started bashing the heads of the peaceful protesters.
The TikTok video also got the unwanted attention of someone in power in DC who directed the IRS to audit the last 6-years of Mark’s tax returns and to scrutinize them, “Microscopically.” This was the sort of audit that everyone feared. The kind of audit that nobody could survive with the relentless requests for all manner of obscure receipts, bank records, cleared checks, savings and checking account activity, cryptocurrency accounts and activity, stock trading accounts and activity, non-profit donation receipts, gifts, inheritances, lottery winnings, medical expenses, home improvement expenses, ad infinitum. I was clear that Mark was being targeted by the government, and there was no doubt that they would surely find something. They always do.
Early one morning, just before dawn, the rescue dogs in the barn and outbuildings began barking fiercely, waking Mark up. He got out of bed, grabbed his 12-gauge pump shotgun, which, living on a ranch with bears in the vicinity, was per the usual, walked out into the living room, and peered out of the big front window. He did not notice anything unusual. On his way to the kitchen from the living room to make some coffee, he heard a strange buzzing sound coming from the outside of the house near the back door where the electrical panel was located. He thought there might be an electrical problem, so he opened the back door to go outside and check it out – and there he was met with a large, matte black drone hovering at eye-level, just beyond the wraparound porch, which not only startled him, but it also triggered a split-second defensive response that resulted in the immediate disassembly of said large, matte black drone via a 12-gauge 00 shotgun blast from the hip. After years of collecting and shooting firearms, Mark was an expert marksman and new a few trick shots.
Mark walked over to the wreckage to investigate. There, on what remained of the matte black carbon fiber fuselage that housed the NiCad batteries, hard drive, HD camera, and circuit boards, was the unmistakable logo of the FBI. He took a video clip of it with his phone. At that precise moment, Mark knew that it was going to be a very long day. With the phone video camera still rolling and the sun rising, he discharged a point-blank 00 shotgun blast into the heart of the electronics. Blown to smithereens was an understatement. He looked into his camera, shook his head, stopped the video, and went back inside the house to finish making his coffee and also to prepare for the imminent battle. He reviewed surveillance video from around the ranch and saw that there were a half-dozen black SUV’s plus an armored personnel vehicle at the front gate. “They must have found something really bad in my tax returns,” he said to Zea. He called a lawyer friend.
“Well, Mark, you certainly have them on failing to provide due process, but they are definitely not going to back down now. They will label you as an unpatriotic tax evader and claim that you started the hostilities, destroyed government property, falsified your tax returns, and they will find a way to escalate until you leave the house feet-first in a body bag. Remember what happed in Waco; your house may ‘accidentally’ catch on fire. Unfortunately, today may be your last one. I advise that you take to your TikTok followers and tell the story as it unfolds. I’ll call the media.”
The commanding FBI agent named Johnson who was watching the live HD video feed from the drone camera as it got blasted out of the sky was not amused. “Do you not understand what the meaning of ‘stealth’ is!” he snapped at the drone pilot, who quickly replied, “You saw what happened – that guy’s reflexes were unbelievable – I had zero time to respond!” “Well, now that the stealth surveillance tactic has been compromised, we’ll have to give Mr. Armstrong a courtesy call and allow him to surrender peacefully,” said Johnson to his colleagues.
Mark’s phone rang with “This is the FBI” displayed as the caller ID without a phone number. He started his live TikTok app and answered the phone in hands-free mode. “Hello FBI, this is Mark Armstrong, I’ve been expecting your call. Fair warning: you are being streamed live in front of a million plus TikTok followers.” There was an awkward moment of silence, and Mark thought that he heard a few muffled expletives before agent Johnson responded, in a calm voice, “Mr. Armstrong, it appears that we may have started off on the wrong foot this morning. You see, you’ve been indicted for tax evasion, and we have a federal warrant for your arrest, and we were simply using the drone to determine if it was safe to send up some agents to take you into custody. But now that you shot it down, not only have you committed another serious federal crime you have also escalated the situation with your hostility.” “Hostility? I’m no threat to anyone, Agent Johnson, and you could have just used the intercom button at the gate – I would have let you in. But now I am in fear for my life after seeing that drone spying on me.” “Mr. Armstrong, are you saying that you are not going to surrender to the FBI?” “Surrender to some trumped up charges brought on by some greedy, bloated, ham-fisted politicians in Washington because I informed the public about the ugly truth of the money grabbing TAIL tax? This is absolute tyranny and likely a death warrant based on the FBI’s infamous history of bungling these sorts of things. I’ll need to consider my options, Agent Johnson.” and with that, Mark hung up the phone. The TikTok live stream responses were blowing up.
Mark addressed his TikTok followers, “Friends; I really don’t want to die today, but the FBI is probably going to raid my house at some point and ‘accidentally’ kill me, so I’m going to leave this live stream on, and you can watch how the events unfold in real time.” He plugged his phone into the charger, set his phone on a stand, put the stand on a table, and aimed the camera with the front window and front door of the house in the field of view. That’s when the power went out. Mark got back in front of his phone and told his audience that the FBI had just cut his power, but he had several fully charged battery banks for his phone to keep the live stream going.
Although Mark was on high alert and flinching at every sound he heard outside of the house, the rest of the day was uneventful, perhaps indicating that the feds were planning for something after nightfall.
Sure enough, just after sunset, the dogs outside started barking again. Mark looked out of the front window to see a small tactical robot rolling up the driveway in the twilight. He grabbed his phone and showed his live stream audience what was happening – which had grown to over 3-million viewers – and said, “Looks like they sent up a robot TAIL tax collector! I don’t know what is going to happen next, but please pray for me and my pets!” And at that very moment, his phone displayed, “Lost Internet Connectivity.” Now the FBI was blocking his 5G signal. Mark found himself completely cut off from the grid. He sipped his cold, whiskey laden coffee in the dark.
As the dogs continued barking excitedly in the darkness, and as Mark continued to observe the tactical robot closing in on his front porch (he had already assumed that it had some sort of fatal explosive or incendiary payload, or other armament intended to kill him), suddenly, from the back of the house, there were headlights shining in through the back door window. Mark assumed that it was the FBI driving in with the armored personnel carrier, coming in from the old, mostly unused back gate that was overgrown with black walnut trees and was only accessible by an old unmapped dirt fire road that ran along the back of the property.
He picked up Zea, who was also barking, and went to the back door window to see what was happening, halfway expecting to take a bullet to the head. That’s when he saw the endless stream of cars and news vans and pickup trucks rolling in with huge American and Gadsden flags abundantly displayed. Then he heard the horns honking. Then he saw droves of people walking in with flashlights and their dogs. The cars and trucks and people began surrounding his house. Someone yelled out from a bullhorn, “MARK ARMSTRONG – YOUR CAVALRY IS HERE!”
In that moment, FBI Agent Johnson realized that he missed seeing the back gate of the property during his earlier recon using satellite images, and this error might cost him his job. He also couldn’t believe what he was witnessing through the HD camera on the tactical robot: The people surrounded it and started chanting, “USA-USA-USA!” while pumping their fists in the air. Johnson lamented to his team, “Dammit! We’re done, boys. Pack it up!” And with that order, the tactical robot operator began backing it down the driveway, slowly, all the while the growing crowd of people escorted it to the gate.
The lights on the property suddenly came back on. Mark’s phone rang with the same, “This is the FBI” caller ID with no phone number. “Armstrong; this is Agent Johnson. It appears that you have a lot of friends supporting you. We’re going to disengage and leave now, and best of luck to you.” Mark replied, “Agent Johnson, why don’t you come up to the house for a dram of whiskey, you know, as a peace offering?” “Thanks, Mark, but I’m on duty. Besides, I don’t like big, potentially hostile, anti-law enforcement crowds. By the way, I was on your side the entire time, but I have orders to follow.” And with that, Agent Johnson ended the call, and the convoy of FBI vehicles drove off into the inky black night.
It became known as the “Wag-the-Tax Revolution.” The media reports said that 5,000 people came to stand with Mark. The FBI said that it was only 500. There was a subsequent anti TAIL tax march on Washington where it was estimated that 5-million people showed up with their beloved, well behaved pets. Mark and Zea became folk heroes and made the usual media appearances. Mark wrote a bestselling book about it. Zea became a well-paid spokesdog for a national dogfood brand.
The pushback against the TAIL tax was so intense across the nation, that every single legislator who voted for it got voted out of office. Thousands of arcane tax laws and anti-liberty and anti-freedom laws were repealed. The size and scope and power and expense of the government was reduced to a point where nobody really noticed it anymore, as it should have been all along.
The people flourished with the additional freedom and liberty, and with the heavy tax burden lifted off of their backs, they had more money in their pockets to put to use for their own personal version of the pursuit of happiness.
Cop, to Rooney, while filling out an FI (field interrogation) card: “Give me your full name, date of birth, street address, and phone number. Okay now, Mr. Rooney, tell me what happened.”
Rooney, with a hint of arrogance: “That terrible man over there chased me down the sidewalk with that pooper scooper full of dog poop and he threatened to hurt me.”
Cop, incredulously: “He threatened to hurt you?”
Rooney: “Well, he didn’t exactly threaten to hurt me, but I felt threatened by him following me down the sidewalk with that thing,” as he gestured toward the pooper scooper.
Cop: “Why would he do that in the first place?”
Rooney: “I don’t know. Maybe he was going to mug me or steal my precious dog, Fang.”
Cop: “Mug you or steal your dog, Fang…really?” Now the cop was shaking his head, I think, because I really didn’t match the profile of a mugger nor a Pomeranian dognapper.
Cop, to me, while filling out another FI card: “Give me your full name, date of birth, street address, and phone number. Now, Mr. Snarky, tell me what happened.”
Me: “Officer, Mr. Rooney over there had been letting his dog poop on my lawn on a regular basis for months without cleaning it up, and I finally caught him in the act this morning.”
Cop: “You actually witnessed Mr. Rooney with his dog, Fang, while said dog relieved itself on your front lawn?”
Me: “Yessir.”
Cop: “And you’re positive it was Mr. Rooney and this dog?” The cop pointed his pen down toward Fang. Fang barked and then hid behind Rooney.
Me: “Absolutely positive, officer – here’s the evidence.” I thrust the loaded pooper scooper toward him.
Cop: “That’s a lot of poop for such a small dog.”
Me: “Fang’s poop is the fresh one in front that looks like a cat turd.” The cop took a closer look and then turned toward Rooney.
Cop, to Rooney: “Well, Mr. Rooney, Mr. Snarky here says that you let your dog poop on his lawn and didn’t clean it up – is this true?”
Rooney: “No, it is not true – that man is a LIAR!”
Cop: “Mr. Rooney, calling someone a liar is a serious accusation. And what about the fresh evidence in the pooper scooper? Are you telling me that this didn’t come from Fang?”
Rooney, in a blustery, dismissive tone: “I have no idea where that came from!”
Cop, sensing that Rooney was not actually telling the truth: “Well then, Mr. Rooney, I guess I have no choice but to take the poop Mr. Snarky alleges as coming from your dog as evidence and also take your dog, Fang, into custody until he poops again at which time the crime lab will perform a DNA test on both poop samples. If they match, Mr. Snarky may sue you for trespassing, property damage, and defamation of character, and you will also be charged with giving false information to a peace officer which is a misdemeanor and could result in up to six months in county jail and a fine up to $5,000.”
Rooney: “Ha! Officer – you’re joking…right?” The officer looked Rooney straight in the eye and shook his head slowly.
Rooney: “You can’t be serious about taking Fang into custody as if he was some common street criminal! You aren’t going to cuff him, are you?”
Cop: “I never joke about making an arrest and taking people or their dogs into custody, Mr. Rooney. I’ll have to radio in for animal control to come and pick Fang up.”
Rooney: “Animal control? Fang will end up in the city dog pound!”
Cop: “Yes, he certainly will. I hope you’ve kept up on his vaccines – you never know what he might pick up at the pound. Stuff like mange, distemper, kennel-cough, ringworm, heartworm, rabies, fleas…stuff like that.”
Rooney, in an excited, wavering voice: “Whoa-whoa-whoa! I-I-I simply cannot stand the thought of Fang sitting behind bars with a bunch of flea-bitten ill-behaved mutts from who knows where. Um, officer, I, ah, I think things may have gotten blown up way out of proportion here. I-I-I mean that I didn’t really feel threatened by Mr. Snarky. I, ahem, I, ah, I was just totally embarrassed that he caught me and Fang red-handed, and I may have, ah, overreacted just a smidgen under such a stressful situation.”
Cop: “A smidgen?”
Rooney: “Okay-okay, I absolutely overreacted. I-I-I owe Mr. Snarky here an apology.” Rooney gave me a sheepish grin and said, “Please accept my sincere apology for acting so foolishly.”
Me: “Mr. Rooney, I was just trying to make a point; please excuse me for my crude, impolite methodology.” We briefly smiled at each other and shook hands. Rooney’s hand was clammy and wimpy; it felt like I was shaking a cold, dead fish.
Cop: “Okay now, citizens, are we good here?”
Rooney and myself, in unison: “Yessir.”
Cop: “Okay now, both of you go home; I have some real criminals to catch.”
And as the cop was walking away from us heading back to his black-and-white cruiser, he reached down to his tactical belt and pulled out a tiny pair of dog-sized handcuffs and twirled them around on his index finger. He was serious after all.
Musing aside, I followed Rooney to the end of the long block where he turned right and headed west. I let him sweat it out for another minute or so and then turned around and walked back toward home. I was feeling some satisfaction that Mr. Rooney now knows that I know that he and his dog Fang are the poop offenders when suddenly the irony of the situation struck me; once again, I had picked up his beloved Fang’s poop. That man was diabolical! I never saw him again.
All of this nonsense could have been avoided if only Mr. Rooney and his ilk would be more responsible about their dog’s poop. This is not hard to do!
The War on Dog Poop needs you to stand up and fight for your right to stroll through your neighborhood without stepping in it and your right not to have to pick up someone else’s dog poop from your front yard.
See something, say something! Call these miscreants out! Take a picture of them and their dog and post them around the neighborhood with some sensationalized tabloid headline, like, “GUILTY OF POOPING IN PUBLIC!” or “IT’S ALL HIS FAULT!” Or something like that.
Or maybe lobby city hall to create a new law for these dog poop ignoramuses that requires them to provide a public service like dog poop clean up, for example. Or perhaps pay a $5,000 fine or spend 6-months in jail. Maybe this will help alleviate the problem. Or not.
Because everyone walking in America deserves public poop-free zones!
A sign of the times. This should NOT be necessary.
Story 9 of 52
By M. Snarky
Authors note: out of respect for my reader’s time, this and future posts will target 1,500 words, or about a 10-minute read per post. Thank you for following my writing journey.
Aside from an IRS audit, stepping into a pile of dog poop on a public sidewalk is the next most hated thing in America. It stinks. It’s messy. It’s disgusting. It gets into the tread of your shoe and now you find yourself trying to get it out by dragging your shoe back-and-forth across someone’s front lawn, looking like a loon in the process, and often exacerbating the problem by driving the poop deeper into the tread. Sometimes this method works, sometimes it doesn’t. Other times, you need to find a stick and try to scrape out the poop from the grooves which is really gross. The last resort is getting back home and using a high-pressure hose nozzle to clean it off which is always effective but now your shoe has to dry out for a day or two. I have much better things to do with my limited time on this planet than cleaning up what was obviously someone else’s mess. What kind of dog owner is it that doesn’t pick up after their dog? The completely arrogant, irresponsible, selfish, and indifferent dog owner, that’s who. These people must be stopped! I declare a War on Dog Poop!
These are the type of people that the “Please Clean up After Your Dog” yard signs were invented for. Signs like this would not be necessary if all dog owners exercised some common decency, for example, picking up their dogs excrement. I’m also pretty sure this group of dog owners are the reason for the proliferation of the “free” dog poop bag dispensers found in public spaces and generally maintained by some city or county governmental department, like Parks and Recreation. Any government entity that tells you something is free is totally lying to you because any good or service provided by the government uses taxpayer dollars to pay for it, ergo, it is not actually free. This also means two other things: 1) Taxpayers paid 10¢ for a 1¢ plastic baggie, 2) Taxpayers are subsidizing people’s lack of proper dog poop clean-up etiquette. There’s probably a free online course about this too, so there’s absolutely no excuse for people not to clean up after their dog. As far as I’m concerned, ignorance cannot be claimed and the lack of picking up after one’s dog is a blatant act of disrespect for the neighborhood.
The not actually free government provided dog poop baggie issue aside, without much effort or expense, dog poop baggies can be purchased almost anywhere. They are in the pet aisle in the supermarket, often at convenience stores, and all over the Internet. Some of them even come with a handy dispenser that can be clipped onto a leash or a collar. They come in various gender specific colors too if that’s your jam. I think the black ones represent non-binary dogs but since dogs are color blind it doesn’t really matter to them. One can even subscribe to have them delivered on a regular basis which is very convenient for busy urbanites. If bought in bulk, they are less than a penny each. So, I think I can rule out inconvenience or budgetary constraints as reasons for not carrying dog poop baggies and picking up after your dog. It must be something else…
Oh! Look! A little satchel of dogshit!
Oddly, some of you DO go to the trouble of picking up your doggos doodoo…and then for whatever idiotic reason you drop the poop baggie to the side and keep moving. You see these everywhere; the little green, blue, pink, or black plastic baggies of dog poop sitting on the sidewalk, or in a driveway, or tossed onto someone else’s front lawn. I just don’t get this half-assed attempt to clean up after your dog. Why can’t you just take the poop bag with you and toss it into the trash when you get home? Oh, maybe it’s the smell that bothers you? Let me tell you something; nobody actually likes the smell of dog poop either except for other dogs and perhaps some super-freaky people, but it comes with owning a dog. You want a dog? Get used to bad breath, smelly poop. and stinky dog farts. If you can’t handle any of that then get a goldfish.
Thinking about this further, I can only imagine the dog poop getting onto the sidewalk or on your front lawn in one of the following ways:
Someone’s dog got loose and relieved itself when the moment came as it was running through the neighborhood. This is free-range poop and there’s not much to be done about it.
Somebody simply left their doggie poop bags at home and didn’t bother to come back to pick up after their dog. These are generally well meaning, but obviously lazy, inconsiderate dog owners.
Someone was physically unable to bend down to clean up after their dog. I’ll give disabled persons and the old folks a pass on this, but maybe they should try curbing their dog.
Somebody just doesn’t care where their dog poops and cares even less about cleaning it up. These dog owners are Public Enemy #1.
There was a #4 in my old neighborhood in Granada Hills who let his dog poop on my front lawn on a regular basis and left me to clean up the mess. He reminded me of an older, graying version of Mr. Rooney from Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, mustache and all. It took me a while to figure out it was him and his ankle biter Pomeranian as he was very sneaky about it. Was it a sign that he didn’t like me? I don’t think so because we never met each other. Or, maybe he thought he was doing me a favor and fertilizing my lawn? Well, I don’t know what he was actually thinking, but one morning I was looking out of my front window sipping my coffee and I caught him and his dog in the act. He was nervously looking around as his dog was dropping a deuce on my lawn. I stormed out of the front door and confronted him about it. There was no use denying it. I said, “I really don’t like cleaning up your dog’s poop; why don’t you pick up after your dog?” He sarcastically quipped, “Or what; are you going to hurt me?” like some schoolyard taunt from a ten-year-old masochist. And then he just casually walked away, leaving the fresh, steaming pile of dog poop on my front lawn. This blatant act of defiance enraged me.
I ran to the backyard through the side gate, grabbed the pooper scooper I used for my dog, quickly scooped up some Labrador poop from the backyard, ran back to the front yard, scooped up the fresh pom poop (indeed, I was going to pay Rooney back in spades) then ran to the corner in the direction that I last saw him walking and looked up and down the street, and there he was, strolling south down the sidewalk like nothing had happened. He was maybe two houses ahead of me. I briskly but quietly walked up behind him, and when I got about ten feet away from him, I said (sarcastically, of course), “Excuse me sir, I think you forgot something!” He stopped dead in his tracks and spun around on his heels to see me standing there with the loaded pooper scooper. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped a little. Without saying a word, he spun back around on his heels and began walking away from me at a fairly brisk pace, looking over his shoulder every now and then to see if I was still following him. Then I said to him, “I’ll just follow you home and leave this on your lawn!” He picked up the pace a little bit more and yelled over his shoulder, “I’M CALLING THE POLICE!” which made me chuckle a little bit thinking about how that interaction with the cops might transpire…
“Oh, honey; look how cute he is!” said my wife, Kim, while pushing her phone into my face with a picture of a small, softball sized fluffy orange hairball. “He’s a rescue cat from Palm Springs named Cheeto that was found in a hole in the desert. He’s already been neutered, and he needs a home; can we adopt him?” A rescue cat with a backstory posted on the Internet looking for a nice suburban home to move into already sounded dubious to me. Also, she asked as if she needed my permission for anything – Kim is going to do what Kim wants to do anyway, especially when it comes to cats. She grew up with cats and so I knew that it really was only a matter of time before she got what she wanted. My cat-free days were numbered.
Kim started scrolling through the plethora of pictures of Cheeto-the-homeless-feral-long-haired-orange-tabby-kitten-found-in-a-hole-in-the-Palm-Springs-desert like he was some A-List celebrity. “Awe, look at him sleeping!” She turned her phone toward me again. I really couldn’t make out his head from his tail and it reminded me of a furry creature from a Star Trek episode titled, The Trouble with Tribbles. Yes, he was undeniably cute. No, I didn’t want to adopt him or any other cat for that matter because it would interfere with my scheme to eventually be a pet-free household so we could travel the world extensively without worrying about any animals back at home.
“I miss not having a cat and Bagheera has been gone for 4-years now.” Bagheera was a fluffy black cat that had lived an indoor life of ultimate leisure with us for 17-years and was from a litter of kittens from another rescue cat named Avalon that Kim “found” wandering around the neighborhood. I sensed a pattern here. “Besides, Sydney needs a playmate.” Sydney is an Aussie-Doodle dog that Kim also “found” on the Internet.
Kim met up with an anonymous woman – who I was sure was a typical low-level Internet con artist – at a local park. Kim got the dog, and our bank account took an unexpected four-figure hit. Easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission, I suppose. Oh, and no documentation for the dog to prove her pedigree or vaccinations…not even a paper receipt for the cash transaction. I’m sure the anonymous dog peddling woman claimed the cash as income on her 2018 federal tax return.
And so, this is how Kim set me up for the Cheeto trap…
“We can drive down to Palm Springs on Sunday and have a nice lunch and Mai Tai’s at the Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar on the strip, then we’ll go over to meet Cheeto. If we like him, we can take him home.” She knew she had me at Mai Tai’s at Tommy Bahama’s. I caved. Kim called Cheeto’s foster parents and arranged the itinerary.
On the Saturday afternoon before we were planning our road trip to the desert to meet this homeless kitten, Kim said that she got a call from Cheeto’s foster parents and they had to change their schedule, and we had to pick up Cheeto before 10:00 AM on Sunday. Damn, the Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar doesn’t open until 11:00. Also, there was no way I was going to show up at a bougee bar for some day drinking in the triple digit desert heat with a kitten in a carrier; it would just be too hot for the little guy. Also, I didn’t want to field any nosey inquiries about Cheeto from any curious onlookers. I was immediately reminded of the quote “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” (translated) from To a Mouse by Robert Burns. Or was it that I was actually tricked? The jury is still out for deliberation on this.
It was a breezy 80-MPH early morning drive to the Coachella Valley, and at around 9:00 AM we met with Cheeto’s foster family, who were very nice people. They had other siblings from Cheeto’s litter that were also very cute, but Cheeto was the cutest of the litter with his long, striped, flaming orange coat and his already magnificent orange striped fluffy tail. Looking at him, what immediately came to my mind was that he is a warrior Viking Kattuz and he should have been named something more appropriate like Ragnar or Frode or Gorm. But since he already had a brand name, I didn’t want to go through the rigamarole of the legal system’s rebranding process and deal with its legions of lawyers and reams of paperwork plus it would be too stressful for him to go before a judge at such a young age to plead his case.
We donated some money to Cheeto’s foster humans to help cover the costs of his surgery and his room and board in Palm Springs, popped the little orange fluffball into a cat carrier that we brought along with us, and were on our way back home before 10:00 AM.
A tear rolled down my face as we drove past the exit for the Marlin Bar.
Twenty minutes into the drive, Kim took Cheeto out of his carrier and held him in her lap all the way home. They bonded while I was driving down the Interstate trying to avoid the sea of idiotic Prius and Tesla drivers going exactly 65-MPH while everyone else around them was going 80. We got home around noon.
Our dog of questionable origins, Sydney, went bonkers when we introduced her to Cheeto. Syd had never seen a kitten before and I believe, at first, she thought Cheeto was a new play toy…until the claws came out. The yelp that Syd let out the first time she got impaled on her nose by a sharp kitten claw was both of pain and astonishment.
Now the real fun begins – raising another kitten. The thing about kittens is that they have no sense of time, and they seem to only have three modes; sleep (80%), eat (2%), and play (18%). Three modes and no schedule means that anything can happen at any time of day or night.
If kitty wakes up at 2:00 AM and wants to play, kitty is going to pounce on your head or on your face or walk up and down your body with remarkably heavy paws for such a small animal. This nocturnal behavior was not exclusive to victimizing the humans in the house – Syd got her fair share of harassment too. Turns out that this little kitten found in a hole in the desert was an insomnia inducing, circadian rhythm killing fluffball from the Viking underworld.
You might be asking; how fluffy is he? For starters, he has thick fur growing out between the pads of his paws that requires constant trimming, or else navigating the hardwood floors is more like ice skating than walking. The long, downy soft fur under his belly turns into baby dreadlocks if you don’t brush it regularly, which he absolutely hates. He has tufts of long fur coming out of his ears like a 90-year-old man. But it is his tail that takes the cake; it is a tail of such enormity that it is nearly the size of his body, and he struts around the house with it proudly waving high in the air and with such dignity that it borders on arrogance.
I’m surprised we haven’t received a notification from the city to get a permit for his glorious tail (effectively a tail tax), but I’m sure somewhere deep within the bowels of city hall, a bureaucrat sitting beneath a flickering fluorescent light is scheming.
Cheeto developed his own little parkour course in the bedroom between the upper and lower levels of the nightstand, our bed, and the dresser, Sydney’s donut shaped bed, and the windowsills. Rattling the horizontal shades in the wee hours of the morning is his personal favorite. It is his way, I think, of saying, “Wake up hoomans – it’s time to play NOW!” This feline reveille is when the 18% play factor feels more like 100%.
We tried to discourage him from his naughty nocturnal behavior with a spray bottle filled with tap water mixed with a little bit of white vinegar, but instead of dissuading him from his little night terror habit, he gamified it. For example, he will rattle the blinds and look over at me to see if I was reaching for the spray bottle. As soon as I motioned that I was arming myself, he would dive under the bed…and then he would come back up and do it again within 5-minutes. Every now and then when I was stealthy enough to hit my moving furry orange target he would scurry off to some dark corner of the bedroom, and after sulking for maybe 5-minutes, he would start all over again. I think he actually liked getting nailed with the spray bottle.
And if you make the mistake of wiggling your toes while you’re sleeping or hanging your hands or feet outside of the blanket, Cheeto will quickly remind you of his presence with a fang or a claw – not in a vicious way, mind you – but man, has he interrupted some good REM sleep sessions. One minute I’m sailing the ocean blue toward an emerald-green tropical island and the next minute I’m being attacked by a Kraken.
We tried closing him out of the bedroom too. It took him about 30-seconds to realize that he could reach under the bottom of the door and hook it from the inside with his claws and rattle it. The problem is that he has no musical rhythm and it made it impossible to incorporate his door rattling with any piece of music that I could think of while trying to lull myself back to sleep. It seemed as if we had a little orange monster in the hallway. I think if we had a levered door handle instead of a round doorknob, he would figure out how to open the bedroom door in a nanosecond. Don’t think that he hasn’t rattled the doorknob too!
Cheeto has developed some unusual dietary habits. He does not like any canned cat food at all. He has rejected every brand on the market; sorry Morris, you’re apparently a mislead spokescat. But Cheeto does love his Lickables, that is, as long as it does not have chunks in it. If it has chunks, he’ll lick around them. He also loves…wait for it…raw asparagus! One day we were bringing in the groceries and temporarily put the grocery bags on the kitchen counter. One of the bags had a bundle of asparagus in it. Cheeto hopped up on the counter and beelined it to that grocery bag, dove into it, pulled out the bundle of asparagus and started chomping the tips off of the stalks. Needless to say, we had to change our dinner menu. What a weirdo.
Cheeto has also developed an unhealthy obsession for plastic bags and not just for playing with; he chews on them and bites off and swallows chunks of them. One day he was not feeling well and was vomiting here and there. Finally, a cat sized bite of plastic sheeting came up and he felt better. We forensically matched it with a bite taken out of a recently delivered Amazon package. I think this also indicates that Cheeto has microplastics in his body. We are now in the habit of keeping all plastic bags away from him but mostly for selfish reasons like not wanting to step in any more cat vomit with bare feet and not wanting to take him to the vet for emergency abdominal surgery at 2-AM.
In our efforts to make life enjoyable, we have purchased many cat related products like catnip laced stuffed toys, plastic balls with bells and feathers, an oversized fake cheese puff bag that crinkles when you touch it, balls of twine, and a laser pointer. A friend of ours gifted Cheeto a nice multi-tiered cat tower replete with scratching posts, a perch, and all sorts of dangly things to bat around. He loves it.
One day Kim brought home a tape roll core made of thick cardboard and casually tossed it onto the living room floor. Cheeto lost his mind for about an hour pouncing, batting, kicking, and chasing that thing around the house. The problem was that he also liked to pounce, bat, kick, and chase that thing around in the wee hours of the morning. This is what happens when you’re a spoiled suburban housecat with an all-access pass and zero rules.
I considered sending Cheeto off to a fancy boarding school somewhere like Shortridge Academy, New Hampshire, Hurtwood House School, United Kingdom, or Collège du Léman, Geneva, Switzerland, to knock off the rough semi-feral edges and polish him up a little bit but after seeing the outrageous tuition of those places I immediately changed my mind as it would quickly land me in bankruptcy court.
On the upside, Cheeto does have a sweet, loving side to him. He likes hanging out on the living room couch with us. He’ll nudge your hands relentlessly to encourage you to pet him. Sometimes he even cuddles with Sydney.
So, we’ll just keep our diamond in the rough gato diablo as he is and adjust our lives accordingly (as per usual) because we do love him despite his lack of a formal education and his overabundance of antics.
msnarky 