Pets And Furniture

June 22, 2003 12:05 AM

You Like The Decoration? Thank The Goddam Dog. To what extent is the organization and decoration of your home dictated and orchestrated by your pet? And would you have it any other way, no matter how repressed you might be at the moment?
posted by MiguelCardoso (14 comments total)

My dog was staring at the monitor of my rather absurd bedside computer when I came to bed (NOT a common behavior), after which she curled up on my pillow behind my head, still looking at the screen (and she's a 50-pound lab/collie mix - there goes the pillow) as I got online and noticed MeFi was back up, then saw this post, and she jumped off the bed...
So Miguel, when did YOU become The Pet Psychic"?

Back on topic: my home office shares a room with my dog's 'emergency' (or, 'didn't get up early enough in the morning to walk her') papers. Gotta be real careful with my printer out-tray. Nuff said.
posted by wendell at 12:50 AM on June 22, 2003

Our dog gets one half of the couch. My wife and I get the other. Abby has her own blue fleece blanket and a Bert and Ernie pillow upon which she reclines. Other than the couch arrangement we've agreed upon, she doesn't require much else. Yet.
posted by josephtate at 1:21 AM on June 22, 2003

Well, apparently Sammy, my roommate's somewhat hefty Persian cat, has a serious distaste for paint on the lower six inches of any door. Fortunately though, he's a slow worker, and I have no intention of helping him in this project.
posted by arto at 1:31 AM on June 22, 2003

(reads the *other* link, realises it uses the same joke, hangs head in shame)
posted by arto at 2:35 AM on June 22, 2003

My parents specifically bought a bigger bed in order to accomodate their two dogs and occasional cat.
posted by PenDevil at 5:43 AM on June 22, 2003

Perhaps you should ask not what you can decorate for your dog, but what your dog can decorate for you ... our residence features a stunning blend of muted earth tones, courtesy of a chocolate lab (a good thing dirt and shedding hair are complementary colours, eh?).

josephtate, it's a slippery slope: when we retrieved Fern from my gf's parents and brought her back to my place, the first thing she did on walking through the door into a strange place was go up to the sofa and sit on it. It was obviously her spot so we wound up putting a towel on 'her half,' to catch the dirt. Then she stopped sitting on 'her half,' and started sitting on 'our half' too, covering 'our half' in sand. We're finally buying a second sofa ... Abby's a cutie btw.
posted by carter at 7:02 AM on June 22, 2003

Heh. My cats have their own room, sort of... I have a two-bedroom apartment, and in addition to the computer in the second bedroom, there's a small "kitty-condo" and the necessary-but-thoughtfully-designed "corner space litterbox". I also placed the kitty condo right in front of the window so they could watch the birds... I guess I'm glad I'm not the only one who makes sure my kitties have good places to hang out.

Seriously, though, I think they think my bed is actually their bed, and they just let me sleep on it.
posted by greengrl at 7:20 AM on June 22, 2003

i've pulled the carpet out of every place we've lived, with or without permission from the landlord.

damn cats.
posted by lescour at 7:57 AM on June 22, 2003

I had a friend in high school whose family was kind of eccentric. Once they went away for a long weekend and couldn't find a sitter for the dog so left the dog alone in the kitchen with big bowls of food and water for three days. When they returned they discovered the dog had escaped from the kitchen and crapped and peed all over the new off-white carpeting in the living and dining rooms. The stains wouldn't come out so they drew borders around them with permanent marker.
posted by TimeFactor at 7:57 AM on June 22, 2003

Submitted for your cat's approval: Cat Hotels and entire, custom-designed playrooms.
posted by stonerose at 9:00 AM on June 22, 2003

My mom painted a wall in the dining room to match her parrot. Actully, she didn't paint the wall directly, she ripped up brown paper grocery bags, dipped them in gluey paint (or painty glue, I wasn't there), and slapped them on the wall over the 1960's-era Nev-R-Fade wood paneling. Chubbier pre-Atkins PlanetKyoto pictured.
posted by planetkyoto at 9:01 AM on June 22, 2003

Looking out the picture window of our living room when I still lived at home, I could see passersby giving us strange looks. It wasn't hard to figure out why - we had an ottoman perched on top of the coffee table in the window. My dad had put it there because the cats liked to sit there and look outside, then curl up in the sunshine and nap. There have been times when I've gone to visit and had to sit on the floor or go into another room to find a chair, because all the available chairs were occupied by snoozing felines (and we musn't disturb them). Yesterday I heard my dad call out to my mom in an irritated voice (as he burrowed through the cupboards) "Are we out of treats? Didn't you buy more when you were at the store today?" and then he stormed out to make a treat run. Did I mention that the treats in question were for the cats? I can't remember a time when I was a kid that Dad ever got upset because I wanted a cookie and we were out.

Recently Mom and Dad noticed an opossum waddling through the backyard. They followed it and saw that it had gnawed a hole through the wooden shed door and was apparently living there. So what did Dad do? He made the hole bigger and sanded it, lest Polly Possum get a splinter. He also puts dishes of food and water in the shed for her. My mom shook her head as she related this to me, adding that when she'd been confined to bed last month with a particularly nasty flu, Dad hadn't brought her any water, much less food, and she still had to get up to fix his breakfast.
posted by Oriole Adams at 1:21 PM on June 22, 2003

this is probably the wrong place to post about charles mingus's cat's bathroom habits (safe for work, btw...).
posted by pxe2000 at 1:33 PM on June 22, 2003

Besides having a cat stand in our front window, we got the couch we have because the wide arms could accommodate lounging felines. The layout for the new bathroom we put in was dictated in part by where we'd put the litterbox. And although it's not decorating, it is domicile-related --the tent we just got was chosen because there would be room for a dog...which we might get...someday. It could have been a lot more extreme.
posted by lobakgo at 2:18 PM on June 22, 2003