Begging and Jealousy

Most of the time, I get nothing but joy out of my pets. However, there are two things that I cannot stand and cannot seem to break. My dog is jealous. My cat begs.

I know exactly why my cat begs. When our past cat became very sick the vet told us to feed her anything she will eat including human food. Of course, you can’t feed one cat and not the other. At the time I did not care that Cleo was begging because I was just happy that the sick cat, Tinsel, was eating. Tinsel was 18 years old when we lost her so she had a nice long life, but we lost her over two years ago. Cleo now begs for not only food, but also pets. In fact, she is insisting she is going to sit on my laptop right now to prevent me from writing this. When I eat, she climbs on me over and over and has the guts to try and steal anything she can get to off of my plate. I have tried everything I can think of to break this down to spraying her with a spray bottle. No luck.

My dog is jealous of anyone or anything but him getting attention. People cannot even hug in my house without him whining and trying to squeeze between. His jealousy is the most extreme when someone wants to pet one of the cats. If you pet a cat, he will chase the cat away and stand in her spot. If there is a cat closer to you than he is, he squeezes himself into any space available. Anyone sitting in the recliner instantly becomes smothered by the cat and dog, who of course fight over who gets to stay. And trust me, a 48 pound dog is NOT a lap dog. I just need to convince him of that. Unlike my cat begging, I do not understand his jealousy. We got him from a shelter when he was only six weeks old. Although one of the cats is only two months older than him, they were both here before him. It is not like he was here and comfortable and then we brought the cats in.

If I could fix these two habits, my house would be much more relaxing. I could eat and recline in peace. I only have one picture of Dameous and Cleo sharing the recliner, so I will share that with you. Maybe there is some hope…