This morning I removed the two aliens from her box to see what Fric would do. After she had nursed her pups and they were sleeping, she got out of the box and retrieved the first of these, giving a strange cry when she did this that I’d never heard her use before. At some point when I was working, she retrieved the second without a sound. Because I haven’t gotten much sleep since the pups were born and I had a consultation scheduled for this evening, I decided to take a nap on the couch. The other two dogs and the cat immediately materialized. Fric came down, saw me, and then became very restless.
First I heard her trying to get into the closet under the stairs. The closet is narrow, but deep with a bar for hanging coats and shelves behind which guarantees that anything put on those shelves is quickly forgotten. I have no idea what’s back there and didn’t want her to be, either. She started going in there about 3 days before the puppies were born and I’ve been careful to keep the door shut since then. When she couldn’t get in, she hauled another toy out of the toy box, this time a stuffed ghost she didn’t have prayer of getting up the steep stairs. She was panting and I heard her at the door to my bedroom. Because I knew it was warmer upstairs (for the pups) I dragged my weary bod off the couch and staggered upstairs and opened the door to my much cooler bedroom for her and went back downstairs. I heard her in there for a while and then it got quiet and I dozed off–as much as one can crammed with two dogs and a cat on a couch. When I went up to change the bedding in the box later, this is what I found the yellow alien in the box with the two purple ones.
So, she must have brought the yellow alien into the bedroom last night when she came to sleep there for short spells when the puppies were quiet. For some reason when I was downstairs with everyone else, she wanted them all back together again. At this point, the only thing I can think of is that she had 3 puppies in her first litter. That and the fact that these particular toys and also the porcupine and the ghost have prominant eyes. I don’t know, maybe she sees them as some sort of guardian angels.
But then, they’re all toys BeeBee has played with that Frica abandoned after she got older, too. Maybe she sees them as ideal baby toys and wants them ready for her puppies when the time comes.
When I changed the bedding in the box, I put the aliens on the floor and replaced the box without them. Within a matter of minutes, Fric had moved the yellow one back in with the sleeping pups, then laid down between the two purple ones in front of the pen. When my old hound, Watson, approached her and them, she growled at him.
Later when I went downstairs to fix the dogs’ dinner, she brought one of the purple aliens with her and again tried to get into the closet under the stairs. When that didn’t work, she dropped her toy, ate her dinner, went out with the other dogs, then back upstairs to tend the pups. While she was doing that, BeeBee played with the alien. A short time later, Fric came down, took the alien away from BeeBee and carted it back upstairs again. By the time I arrived, it was in the pen, but not in the box, and the third alien still on the rug. It will be interesting to see where everyone will be when I get up tomorrow.