Pets

So sorry, Scream. Sounds like she had a nice long life with you.

That's some adorable shit.

After our dog Ziva passed, my parents decided on a quick day trip from MD to visit me up in NY and they decided to bring our other dog, Chase, with them. His longest car trip prior to this was only about an hour or so when my dad first picked up Ziva and him from the shelter. He handled the six hour trip like a champ, got to enjoy all kinds of scenery, and was incredibly confused but happy to see me and my BF at the end of the trip at our apartment. He also got introduced to our cat, Sansa. Really wasn't sure how well this was going to go as Chase is a decent sized dog at 55lbs, he isn't socialized at all and is extremely high energy. I figured Sansa would probably just go hide under the bed for the duration of the visit, but I was wrong!

We brought in Chase, and I got Sansa's attention with her bag of treats and laid some down just as she caught the first sight of Chase. Naturally, she had the biggest "wtf is that" face I've ever seen on her, but she didn't run and instead slowly picked up the treats I put down and got to sniffing towards Chase. Chase pretty much just acknowledged Sansa's presence and kept an eye on her but other than that didn't really have much of a reaction, which is super unusual from him since even the fakest looking animals on TV make him go ballistic.

After some cautious sniffing and staring, Sansa eventually laid down near Chase and started doing her adorable cat shit like rolling around on her back, staring at you upside down, wiggling her tum at you, etc. Then she started slowing reaching and dragging herself along the floor closer and closer to Chase and got within a couple inches of him. And then they fell asleep and took a nap next to each other like that, and I was too busy d'awwing to take a damn pic.

Overall, parents and pup were over for about an hour and a half or so and we had no incidents at all. Sansa never felt she needed to go retreat to the bedroom and Chase was well-behaved the whole time. The BF and I have been considering getting a second cat recently, but I've been a little hung up worrying about how Sansa would react to having another animal in the apartment. After this, I feel a little bit better, even though I know it's not the same as introducing her to another cat, but she only ever showed curiosity and friendliness after getting thrown in with another creature with absolutely no introduction. I'm hoping when we do find a second cat to bring home, with some actual proper introduction and setup, it'll go without too many issues.

Chase thankfully is doing well despite Ziva being gone. He had a rough first week where he would wander the house looking for her and was much lower energy than usual, but his spirit's coming back and he's playing with my parents again. We'd been worried since the two were pretty much attached at the hip, but Ziva was always the more independent of the two and we weren't sure how Chase would handle being alone. Our little girl came home a few days ago and now has her spot on the hearth next to our old dog, Furlough. Going to try and get together as many pics as I can find and send them down to my parents so they can find a good one to put in her frame. We'd gotten the usual sympathy card from the vet hospital, but the main vet who worked with Ziva also gave us a lovely hand written note saying what a wonderful dog Ziva was whenever she saw her for her many appointments and how sorry she was that she couldn't save her.

Hopefully that was some happier shit. Also Ampersand looks like a badass cat.