The Adventures of Princess Squeaker Part 5

The Others

Some odd sounds woke me after Mom guardian finished cleaning our home. It was the rattle of metal, and I jumped up to see her fencing off half our space. Then she brought in another white fluffy bed and placed it in the fenced off area! Full of curiosity, I just had to know what was going on. A glistening brass fence surrounded the area by the stove. This shifted our potty space towards the back door, and my siblings began to complain. Sensing something important was happening, I kept silent and observed.

Mom guardian than began bringing in ‘the others’ two at a time. They were smaller than us, and smelled different, but they looked kind of like my siblings. Aunt Freya anxiously watched as our guardian placed them carefully on the other fluffy bed. When they cried out, she seemed almost frantic to get to them, but waited until there were six. Two of them were black and white, almost like Xena, and two of them were gray like me, Christmas and Elvis. One of them was red and white like Ace and Mitu, but one was a very light tannish-red color. They whined and yelped when they were alone, but quieted immediately when Aunt Freya curled up with them.

Mom guardian explained they were our cousins, as our father’s brother was their father. The gray girl she called Silver, and the boy she called Face because of his wide white face markings. One black and white pup she called Cat because his neck mark looked like a kitten, the other she called Flakes since his mark looked like a big fat snowflake. The dark red boy she called Brownie, and the other one she called Buck, for his buckskin color. They looked very different, almost more like toys than real puppies, like they were painted. That meant that we had more of us to play with, and I did a little happy dance by their gate and howled hello. Silver came to the gate, but instead of greeting me back, she ran straight for my squeaky! She grabbed it and ran back for the gate and I intercepted. How dare she!?

She was so much smaller that I bowled her over and she howled as if I wounded her. Mom guardian was mad and yelled at me! It hurt, and I went and hid under the counter. Did that mean I had to share my toys with them too? Outrageous!

So we decided to set up patrol around their perimeter to ensure it did not happen again. For a while we kept them out of our space and were able to make forays into their territory to take their toys because we were big enough to jump over the gate and they weren’t.

A few days later, Mom guardian put my siblings and I in the livingroom, and I guarded our food from ‘the others’ even though she put them in a different room. The house smelled of pine and bleach as she scrubbed and disinfected the floor, but when she was done, there was no more gate!

We had to mingle with the others! But as Silver approached me and pawed at me playfully, I thought perhaps this wasn’t such a bad thing after all. I used to be the smallest, but not any more!