Update on Maggie & Heed

I thought I'd post this right quick, since I was looking over the archives and realized that I hadn't said anything about Maggie since that last post about her growling at Heed. Since that post sounded dour, and things in fact are awesome, I thought a little update was in order.

Maggie is doing great. We still make her work for her rewards, and she is listening to us and learning words and signals very well (like walk, wait, and come). We are learning what her different moods mean, what different sounds in the house mean when we are not in the room with her (for example, the sound of paws on the kitchen table is now clearly identifiable), and we're getting the hang of how much exercise she needs to have to keep from going stir-crazy. She has lost weight, maybe as much as 3 lbs, which doesn't sound like much until you see the before and after photos. It's about half of what the vet recommended she lose, so that's pretty awesome.

She is much more affectionate towards us now, and shows a lot of personality. She's lost pretty much all her food aggression so far as I can tell - her and Heed drink water out of the same bowl, and once she figured out that Heed has no interest in her food aside from smelling it, she stopped growling at him about it. They not only tolerate each others' presence, they interact, curling up on the same couch cushion for a nap, touching noses, and when Heed has his fugnuts-o-clock race around the house, Maggie is right behind him, trying to initiate a game of will-you-freaking-chase-me-already. She still doesn't have a big interest in toys, but will occasionally romp around with her squeaky hedgehog or the mysterious lime green mittens that turned up in the living room and no one remembers where they came from. They are ugly and fit for dog chewings.

She still sleeps in her crate at night, so Hastur and the Library Overlord totally lost a bet there, though they were right that I do feed her more people-scraps than I probably should. She doesn't get them every day, or every week, and she has to lay on the floor and wait for me to bring the food down to her nose and THEN wait for me to say 'Okay', but she does get them. We've even given her treats around other dogs and had her do tricks and not show any aggression, so that's awesome. We need to get ahold of her foster-mom, though, because I lost my phone at a wedding like a month ago (seriously, so many weddings) and we still need to get the paperwork all done up in our names. I wonder if it's rude to just drop by?

Heed is still Heed. He sleeps on you, or near you, or if he picks a really uncomfortable spot instead of you, and he's gained back some of his weight again - I'm eyeballing him at around 18 lbs, so he's gained about what Maggie's lost. People always tell me that he must be a really fat cat to weight so much, and you know, he IS fat, but we compared him and the dog, and from shoulder to butt they're just about the same length. Heed is shorter by a small bit, and he's about half as wide, but he's still essentially a beagle-sized cat. Living with him, it's odd for me to see normal cats, because they always look so small. He still won't go to bed until I do, so I think I'll let him get on that.