Our son’s job has been taking him back and forth between his Michigan home and Chicago, so we’ve been getting his dog and cat, Wesley and Bugsy, quite a bit too.

I’m happy to report that we have the science of separation perfected.

Meet the Players: 

Bugsy---the cutest, most curious and entertaining little cat I’ve ever known.  He is feisty and fearless and will playfully attack the face of any other animal, just for the heck of it. He also tries to escape to the great outdoors whenever he can, which is not allowed.

Wesley—an 85 pound Yellow Lab with soulful brown eyes and a sweet disposition toward everyone and everything except—

Riley---a very fat white cat who owns our house and everything and everyone in it.  Riley also hates everyone except Marsha and me and ---

Wrigley---the world’s sweetest and also smallest male Yellow Lab, weighing only 55 pounds.  

To sum up the relationships, Wrigley gets along with everyone, as do Marsha and I.

Bugsy likes everyone and attacks everyone’s face and tries to run out the door every chance he gets.

Wesley likes everyone except Riley.

Riley hates everyone except Marsha, Wrigley and me.

This is where the science comes in.

First:  How to keep Bugsy from escaping as we come and go.  If we use the back door, the secret is to first open the nearby basement door.  Bugsy loves our basement.  It is full of secrets for him to explore, and we’ve told him it is off-limits, so every time we open the door, he bolts down the stairs.  This allows us time to get out the back door.

The best way to get in and out of the house is to use the front door, which has  the “cat lock.”  If we have guests and we are all leaving at once, they must think we are nuts because we insist that everyone cram into the tiny foyer.  We toss Bugsy back into the living room, and close the inner door.  Then, we leave by the front door. 

Second:  The bigger challenge is the nighttime routine. 

During the day, Riley has the run of the east half of the second floor, which consists of three rooms that are inter-connected, being laundry room, dressing room and bedroom.  Each also has a doorway to the hallway.

At night, Bugsy is confined to the laundry room so that he doesn’t spend the night attacking faces.  Wesley and Wrigley sleep in the dressing room and Marsha and I are in the bedroom.  Riley gets the rest of the house.

The problem is how to get everyone in position.

I’ll just explain the morning routine:  Dogs whine to wake us up.  Marsha slips out into the hallway and goes to find Riley and his food dish.  She brings them upstairs.  In the meantime, I’ve let Bugsy out of the laundry room and into the other two rooms with the dogs and me. I’ve closed the laundry room door.  Marsha comes to the hallway door to the laundry room and hollers “OK!” and at that precise moment, she tosses Riley and the food dish into the laundry room and slams the door as I open the bedroom door and let the dogs and Bugsy out into the house

I run downstairs, throw open the basement door to let Bugsy down there to explore, let the dogs into the backyard, run back inside myself to use the facilities, run back to the back yard to retrieve the dogs.

I feed Wesley in the kitchen, take Wrigley back upstairs because he and Riley always dine together in the laundry room, and then I take Bugsy’s food dishes back down to the kitchen from the laundry room and----I can’t remember the rest of it. But they were all alive when I left the house this morning, so I think it is working.  

                               by Jim Whitehouse

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