Unlike the people at the Day Job, the dogs pretty well conform to
societal expectations of behavior for dogs. They roll in nasty smelling
stuff whenever they can, scratch themselves a lot, chase cats, eat garbage,
howl at firetrucks, and bark their fool heads off at everyone that comes
near the house. Since they are, by ordinary standards , kind of large dogs,
this last can be a bit of a problem. Unless of course the humor value of
watching the pizza guy climb up on his car is greater for you than the value
of not having your friends terrorized when they come to your house.
We seem to have become resigned to the humor aspect of the thing.
In real life, I'm convinced that if any person were so foolhardy as to break into the Day Job the dogs would docilely follow them around sniffing their crotch in between barks until the cats showed up and killed them in cold blood. I'm not sure why the cats would do this, they don't own anything worth stealing, and they don't seem to care if we do either. I guess its just that they like killing things. I've watched the cats for years now, and, having noticed that they don't particularly like people, but intentionally hang around them, and that they don't care about things or places, but nevertheless inspect every inch of both, I have concluded that they are spies sent by an alien intelligence. Having figured this out, I try to confuse them every chance I get, but without knowing who they spy for its hard to know what slant to put on things. Still its good to keep them on their toes.
There are also fish. Lots of them. My favorite are the goldfish. We weren't planning on having goldfish, mind you, they were just feeder fish bought to hang out in the tank while it stabilized, then get eaten. There were seven of them, named Manny, Moe and Jack. All but three died, and the rest got too big for anything that would fit in the tank to be able to eat them long before we got the tank stabilized. There is a lesson in that- if you like your fish, pick enough names for all of them.
We have dogs, cats and fish, and have had turtles, birds, lizards and gerbils, but for some reason, everyone was always fascinated by the rats. The first rat was a cute little white rat that the cat dragged in. This rat seemed unusually friendly, so we rescued it and kept it. We named it Mr. Rat, and put up "found" posters around the neighborhood. People thought it was a joke. So, Mr. Rat stayed. The name Mr. Rat revealed remarkable ignorance of basic rat anatomy, but fortunately, we did not learn this the hard way. Mr. Rat was a lot of fun for the entire house. The cats would sit in front of the cage and watch her for hours. When loose in the house she would busy herself storing food for the coming lean times. What better entertainment than going to bed only to find a half dozen stale donuts and some cat crunchies in your bed? Eventually though she got outside, where she was fair game for the cats, and was never seen again. The next rats, Binky and Meltdown, were never able to live up to the expectations built up by Mr. Rat. They were, well, rats. However, while Mr. Rat had been adventurous to the point of stupidity, the new rats were downright timid. This had its disadvantages, but it enabled us to adopt a method of keeping them that was more in keeping with Day Job philosophy: their cage was their private space, but they could go wherever they wanted. Oddly enough though, their favorite place was the top of their cage.