Week(s) 30-4: First-world problems of the #2 degree
Hey, LJI: Meet Pickles and Henry.
Right, right, it's a totally cheap tactic, I know... the pet entry.
But it's not like all y'all are perfectly innocent of the same. How many times this season have I read an Old Yeller-style tale, fictional or real, that made me weep uncontrollably as my touchpad hand du jour* involuntarily clicked your voting box and I screamed "OH GOD, I'M BEING BLATANTLY MANIPULATED, DAMN YOU [lj-user], DAMN YOU TO HELL"? Too darned many to count, that's all I definitively remember.
Anyway, I'm not here to tell a tale of animal woe and/or tug on your helpless heartstrings-- although my pets (only 66.6% pictured here; grandpa-cat Champ was off being crotchety somewhere, as per usual) are 100% totally awesome and way, way better than yours.
Rather, I am here to discuss a slight wrench that Henry, the otherwise-wonderful fake dachshund (a well-documented breed AKA "fauxshund"), has thrown into the complex machinery of domestic bliss.
And, furthermore, I am here to propose an invention... an invention that could change the course of life as we know it.
I'm 36 now. I've had cats "of my own" since the second I turned 22 and found myself livin' dorm-free, my current "eldest" Champ being the remaining original member of the late-90s kitten-band that spontaneously formed in my grad-school apartment.
Like so many other things, cats are generators of both love and waste. I always loved my cats, and I always hated cleaning the litterbox. Eventually I put an end to this tricky dichotomy by splurging on an expensive device called the Litter Robot. It is an automatic electronic litterbox.
If you've ever tried lesser electronic or automated litterboxes such as the Littermaid or that horrible thing that is basically a constantly running cat-toilet, you're probably thinking that I wasted my nearly-$400 investment. I must assure you that this is not the case.
Not a paid testimonial: The Litter Robot is a modern miracle. It saves me on litter (we go through maybe a quarter as much as we used to, no joke), and the only thing it requires me to do is to empty a normal garbage bag once every 7-10 days (with two "productive" cats). Malfunctions only occur when I irresponsibly forget to look at it even within that generous interval, and they are usually easily / quickly / un-messily dealt with.
The Litter Robot freakin' changed my life, and I wasn't ever going back. When we had the fire and lost basically all of our material possessions to smoke damage if not outright burnination, the very first household-y thing I replaced was the Litter Robot. The bed came second. That should tell you something.
A few months post-fire: enter fauxshund.
Henry was not my idea. I really love dogs too-- hell, I love basically all animals that don't want to eat me. I grew up with dogs and cats, and adored them all. But as constant companions and roommates in my own personal life, my cats were enough for me.
They were not enough for my wife, a comparatively new installation in the household. "They only love you," she said, night after night, as I was tied up petting two very happy, loudly-purring cats on my lap. "I want something that loves me."
She wanted a dachshund; that was worse. I am mostly a fan of big, friendly, mellow dogs-- perpetually smiling grey-haired retrievers, the whole suburban dog-cliche, even with my general strong distaste for most other suburban affectations.
I've met very few dachshunds that I have liked; in my personal experience, they're usually standoffish little wanna-be hipster-barista dogs with no visible use for their owners, let alone anyone else. We agreed we'd at least get a mutt to counter these perceived tendencies.
Weeks later, following night after fruitless December night spent at the Humane Society, she picked up Henry from a new litter, with just enough dachshund poking through his little barely-formed puppy visage. She instantly knew she wanted him.
I paid the adoption fee. Merry Christmas, honey. Enjoy your dog, and all the maintenance he will surely entail.
Emphasis "your". Your dog. Your problem.
Needless to say, I am totally in love with this little guy. He's the polar opposite of my personal image of a typical dachshund; I'm incredibly grateful for... whatever it is that he's mixed with. He has a fantastic, enthusiastic, just-outgoing-enough, very easy-to-love personality.
As you can see above, Henry gets along very well with the cats (I actually snuck up on him sleeping / spooning with Pickles, his best buddy and just about the greatest cat ever). He's not the smartest dog, but he's incredibly sweet-- not just to us, but to everyone he meets. He's decided he is a two-owner dog, but he does obviously love my wife more.
Her dog.
Dogs, too, generate both love and waste.
One mounting problem in our marriage is that we're both inherently very lazy. And in my book, since it was her decision to add a dog to the household, she should at least clean up the manageable quantity of very real Fauxshundprodukt that Henry produces.
She never, never does this. Not even when it gets to critical mass and I've made it clear that I've cleaned up the Fauxshundprodukt the last eighteen times in a row and oh man would you just LOOK at the backyard right now and goddammit YOUR DOG.
Given his catlike size, I suppose we could train Henry to also use the Litter Robot. However, since we can't even seem to get him to "speak" on demand, I have a feeling that a learning task this complex would be a strenuous endeavor with basically zero payoff.
Obvs, spoken from my experience as a happy Litter Robot owner: What we need-- what the world needs-- is something like a Poop-Roomba.
Set the little guy off onto the backyard patio or backyard. In just minutes daily, it hunts down the Fauxshundprodukt and exterminates with extreme poo-poo-prejudice.
I go back to "work" on whatever pointless crazy-ass thing I'm doing, my wife goes back to lazing on the couch on her off-days watching Real Housewives of Nineteen and Counting, and Henry sits there happily wagging his tail, silently working on his next brown not-exactly-magnum opus. No more yelling about whose turn it is to scoop (hint: it's hers).
This figment of my lusty imagination surely must be a device within easy technical reach at masses-friendly pricing. A Roomba is probably even more sophisticated in its logic, and that's been on the freakin' Sears shelves for a decade now.
How hard is it to teach a modern microprocessor to locate and/or identify something as obvious as a dog turd with 95-100% accuracy? Now, I ain't no FIRMWARE ENGINEER like some of y'all, but I posit that it really can't be that difficult in our space-age world.
Get it working for a couple hundred bucks street. I can pretty much guarantee you couldn't produce 'em fast enough for the first 2-3 years of manufacture.
So, all inventor-geniuses reading this, get on it. I'll be very, very happy to sign up as a BM beta tester. I won't even demand royalties. A much less shitty backyard would be thanks enough.
This entry receives the_day_setup's Illustrious Seal of Tenuous Prompt-Satisfaction Approval.
* That's right... I am touchpad-ambidextrous. Again: BRING IT, NERDS.
Right, right, it's a totally cheap tactic, I know... the pet entry.
But it's not like all y'all are perfectly innocent of the same. How many times this season have I read an Old Yeller-style tale, fictional or real, that made me weep uncontrollably as my touchpad hand du jour* involuntarily clicked your voting box and I screamed "OH GOD, I'M BEING BLATANTLY MANIPULATED, DAMN YOU [lj-user], DAMN YOU TO HELL"? Too darned many to count, that's all I definitively remember.
Anyway, I'm not here to tell a tale of animal woe and/or tug on your helpless heartstrings-- although my pets (only 66.6% pictured here; grandpa-cat Champ was off being crotchety somewhere, as per usual) are 100% totally awesome and way, way better than yours.
Rather, I am here to discuss a slight wrench that Henry, the otherwise-wonderful fake dachshund (a well-documented breed AKA "fauxshund"), has thrown into the complex machinery of domestic bliss.
And, furthermore, I am here to propose an invention... an invention that could change the course of life as we know it.
I'm 36 now. I've had cats "of my own" since the second I turned 22 and found myself livin' dorm-free, my current "eldest" Champ being the remaining original member of the late-90s kitten-band that spontaneously formed in my grad-school apartment.
Like so many other things, cats are generators of both love and waste. I always loved my cats, and I always hated cleaning the litterbox. Eventually I put an end to this tricky dichotomy by splurging on an expensive device called the Litter Robot. It is an automatic electronic litterbox.
If you've ever tried lesser electronic or automated litterboxes such as the Littermaid or that horrible thing that is basically a constantly running cat-toilet, you're probably thinking that I wasted my nearly-$400 investment. I must assure you that this is not the case.
Not a paid testimonial: The Litter Robot is a modern miracle. It saves me on litter (we go through maybe a quarter as much as we used to, no joke), and the only thing it requires me to do is to empty a normal garbage bag once every 7-10 days (with two "productive" cats). Malfunctions only occur when I irresponsibly forget to look at it even within that generous interval, and they are usually easily / quickly / un-messily dealt with.
The Litter Robot freakin' changed my life, and I wasn't ever going back. When we had the fire and lost basically all of our material possessions to smoke damage if not outright burnination, the very first household-y thing I replaced was the Litter Robot. The bed came second. That should tell you something.
A few months post-fire: enter fauxshund.
Henry was not my idea. I really love dogs too-- hell, I love basically all animals that don't want to eat me. I grew up with dogs and cats, and adored them all. But as constant companions and roommates in my own personal life, my cats were enough for me.
They were not enough for my wife, a comparatively new installation in the household. "They only love you," she said, night after night, as I was tied up petting two very happy, loudly-purring cats on my lap. "I want something that loves me."
She wanted a dachshund; that was worse. I am mostly a fan of big, friendly, mellow dogs-- perpetually smiling grey-haired retrievers, the whole suburban dog-cliche, even with my general strong distaste for most other suburban affectations.
I've met very few dachshunds that I have liked; in my personal experience, they're usually standoffish little wanna-be hipster-barista dogs with no visible use for their owners, let alone anyone else. We agreed we'd at least get a mutt to counter these perceived tendencies.
Weeks later, following night after fruitless December night spent at the Humane Society, she picked up Henry from a new litter, with just enough dachshund poking through his little barely-formed puppy visage. She instantly knew she wanted him.
I paid the adoption fee. Merry Christmas, honey. Enjoy your dog, and all the maintenance he will surely entail.
Emphasis "your". Your dog. Your problem.
Needless to say, I am totally in love with this little guy. He's the polar opposite of my personal image of a typical dachshund; I'm incredibly grateful for... whatever it is that he's mixed with. He has a fantastic, enthusiastic, just-outgoing-enough, very easy-to-love personality.
As you can see above, Henry gets along very well with the cats (I actually snuck up on him sleeping / spooning with Pickles, his best buddy and just about the greatest cat ever). He's not the smartest dog, but he's incredibly sweet-- not just to us, but to everyone he meets. He's decided he is a two-owner dog, but he does obviously love my wife more.
Her dog.
Dogs, too, generate both love and waste.
One mounting problem in our marriage is that we're both inherently very lazy. And in my book, since it was her decision to add a dog to the household, she should at least clean up the manageable quantity of very real Fauxshundprodukt that Henry produces.
She never, never does this. Not even when it gets to critical mass and I've made it clear that I've cleaned up the Fauxshundprodukt the last eighteen times in a row and oh man would you just LOOK at the backyard right now and goddammit YOUR DOG.
Given his catlike size, I suppose we could train Henry to also use the Litter Robot. However, since we can't even seem to get him to "speak" on demand, I have a feeling that a learning task this complex would be a strenuous endeavor with basically zero payoff.
Obvs, spoken from my experience as a happy Litter Robot owner: What we need-- what the world needs-- is something like a Poop-Roomba.
Set the little guy off onto the backyard patio or backyard. In just minutes daily, it hunts down the Fauxshundprodukt and exterminates with extreme poo-poo-prejudice.
I go back to "work" on whatever pointless crazy-ass thing I'm doing, my wife goes back to lazing on the couch on her off-days watching Real Housewives of Nineteen and Counting, and Henry sits there happily wagging his tail, silently working on his next brown not-exactly-magnum opus. No more yelling about whose turn it is to scoop (hint: it's hers).
This figment of my lusty imagination surely must be a device within easy technical reach at masses-friendly pricing. A Roomba is probably even more sophisticated in its logic, and that's been on the freakin' Sears shelves for a decade now.
How hard is it to teach a modern microprocessor to locate and/or identify something as obvious as a dog turd with 95-100% accuracy? Now, I ain't no FIRMWARE ENGINEER like some of y'all, but I posit that it really can't be that difficult in our space-age world.
Get it working for a couple hundred bucks street. I can pretty much guarantee you couldn't produce 'em fast enough for the first 2-3 years of manufacture.
So, all inventor-geniuses reading this, get on it. I'll be very, very happy to sign up as a BM beta tester. I won't even demand royalties. A much less shitty backyard would be thanks enough.
This entry receives the_day_setup's Illustrious Seal of Tenuous Prompt-Satisfaction Approval.
* That's right... I am touchpad-ambidextrous. Again: BRING IT, NERDS.