Mya was sleeping too, until she heard me walk up to the couch. I'm glad they get along so well. Mya is my fierce one, and I thought she would take a while to warm up to the puppy. She surprised me by being sweet right away.

Shoe Fetish

This may be Cyrus' way of asking us to stay home - steal all our shoes and we can't go anywhere. Actually, he seems to like them because they are nice and heavy. When he gets ahold of one of my husband's steel-toed work boots and shakes it back and forth, he wobbles back and forth himself.

Or perhaps he likes the stink.

His other favorite activity is chewing on Mya. She is surprisingly tolerant of him and they love to chase each other around the house. Perhaps its her way of making up for all the treats and chews that she steals from him.

Cast of Characters

Okay, I admit it: I don't have a real zoo. It just seems like it sometimes. My husband and I share our home with three dogs - a dachshund-mix, a dalmatian, and a new saluki puppy - a corn snake, and two saltwater fish tanks, one for display, one for soft coral frags. Emily, the dalmatian, has been with me more than half my life. Mya, the dachshund, is 5 years old, very clever, and knows it. Cyrus has been with us for about 2 weeks and already I think I should have named him Houdini. He is very smart and agile and, at 11 weeks, can already scale the 42" barricade we've been using to keep him in the kitchen when we're out. Luckily, he's been very well-behaved in his unsupervised explorations. My corn snake is named Sir Hiss, after the snake in the Robin Hood cartoon, and is around 3' long now. Of all the pets I've ever had, a corn snake is the one I whole-heartedly recommend to any parent whose kid wants a pet (although, only with proper research and children of the right age/maturity level, of course).

So, without further ado, welcome to the zoo.