Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [38]
Jennifer came home from her exercise and yoga classes one Saturday and found food strewn all over the floor in the kitchen, the refrigerator door wide open. She assumed that I had been cleaning out the refrigerator and had become distracted, and put everything back in place. When I came downstairs after showering, she asked me about it. I told her I had been doing no such thing. When this happened a second time a few days later, I finally realized what was going on. I noticed that Oogy’s bag of food was missing, as was some cheese and the lunch meat that had been in the cold drawer. The fruits and vegetables had not been touched. The beverages and salad dressings had not been opened. What was left of the missing bags of food was in pieces underneath the dining room table, which is where Oogy likes to take his illicit treasure. He seems to think of it as his little cave, where no one can see him.
Oogy had figured out how to open the refrigerator.
I put a bungee cord across the handles for the freezer and the refrigerator adjacent to it. It was the only way to keep him out. On several occasions since then, though, when the last one of us to use the refrigerator has forgotten to clip the cord in place, Oogy has raided it. I can tell by his demeanor when I walk in the door. If he isn’t there greeting me joyously but is skulking, his body low to the ground, head drooped but watching me, I know he is feeling guilty of something, and the first thing I check is the refrigerator. Then I go into the dining room and clean up the debris.
So far, the freezer has remained safe. However, there are two floor-to-ceiling storage cabinets Oogy started to open, randomly selecting boxes and bags of food to tear into. Each cabinet has two doors, so we also started to keep a rubber band wrapped around the door handles of each cabinet; another bungee cord prevented Oogy from accessing the trash; a third kept him out of the corner cupboard, where his dry food is stored. On more than one occasion, he has accessed each of these. He rarely will open any of these places when we are home and often will not eat what he has pilfered; it seems the sheer knavery of the act was important to him. He could also be counted on to take any food left on the counter at any time, and did so regularly.
It was never the loss of the food that bothered me, but the idea that he might ingest plastic to get at the food, which could lead to blockage and necessitate surgery. This is why I posted signs around the kitchen as well as on the back door reminding everyone to make sure the cords and rubber bands were in place when they left the kitchen or the house.
As he matured, Oogy’s personality continued to exhibit a large portion of sheer mischievousness and playfulness. When I am making a bed, he will often jump onto it, lie down, and growl. He will roll onto his back, all four paws in the air, thrashing his head back and forth like a blind snake. He enjoys being covered with the sheet or blanket, wallowing around until his head emerges. Often when we are otherwise fully occupied, when I’m in the kitchen and the boys are doing homework, for instance, Oogy will pick up one of his soft toys and come into whatever room I am in and start bumping me in the butt with it. I am then supposed to stop whatever I am doing and follow him into the dining room, get down on all fours, and plod after him, chasing him under the table and around the chairs, while wherever he is, he will move someplace else under the table and growl at me while I veer in that direction. I have to let him win the tug-of-war that ensues when I am finally able to grab what he has in his mouth. Eventually, he will stop chewing on the toy and luxuriate in the attention I give him, which, after all, is what he has been after from the outset.
Almost every evening before settling down to sleep, he cases the room where the boys are watching TV or working on their laptops. He will go to the windowsills, the TV stand, the bookcase,