Gathered

As I sit here writing I have a not-so-sweet but oh-so-cute black and white piranha curled up at my side. Some people might say she looks more like a boston bull terrier but those people would be wrong. Said piranha insists, quite vocally and punctuating her thoughts with love bites, that she must be melded to my side in order to sleep. Her boxy, ugly-cute head is half on my keyboard so that every time my left hand moves my arm brushes up against her cute little puppy nose. Which besides being wet and squashed contributes to the snuffling-snoring noise she makes every few seconds.

Farther down the couch on my left is a slightly resentful fox terrier who also happens to be black and white. He is casting jealous, insecure looks at the intruder-piranha every few minutes even though I know he'd much rather be sleeping as his eyelids droop most piteously. Other than that he's resting easy despite the fact he is stringently not allowed to sit on, look at or be within ten feet of the couch. My parents are not home and they are the enforcers of this rule.

At my feet, keeping them a shade too warm, is a slightly lame but nonetheless effervescent and personable boxer pup. At the stately age of five he is no longer a pup, but will never be anything more or less than that. If I begin to believe that the black and white terrier shooting resentful glances at the piranha-pup is sad, I have only to look at the boxer to know that it gets sadder. His wrinkled, droopy face is conveying just how deeply he feels that he is being excluded from the couch. The sorrowful brown eyes roll from one terrier to the other, finally lighting on my face before closing with a long, snuffling wheeze.

Across from me are two cats, an orange tabby and a gray one. I am not biased but the orange cat is the cuter one, his grumpy old man face and his quiet yellow eyes do not betray his skill as a hunter. Only today he has brought two voles to their graves, and is looking well pleased with himself. Even if I could not see his bright pelt against the outline of the new green patterned chairs, I would know he was there by the car motor rumbling from his chest. The gray tabby is the only animal that the orange one tolerates in any manner. She is curled up at the proper distance from the king of the jungle, blinking lazily into the light. There is prey to be hunted, a nice juicy moth nearby, but he is not worth her effort and she moves on...

The last, the almost-youngest, is a yellow siamese whose lissome form is constantly in motion. She is not at rest, the only one to pace the living room like a cage, although she is certainly free to tear through the house like a she-devil if she pleases. The moth is beyond her notice. She chases an invisible flow across the carpet, over the dog's paws, up the couch -stopping only to lick my hair- and slinking underneath the chair with the orange and gray tabbies. She is content. Her world is movement and play. She cannot understand the sleepy mood that has stolen over the living room.

But wait. A distant car door slams. The male terrier's ears perk slightly, the boxer lifts his head. The cats tense to flee.
Ah... the door opens and the silence is lost. The dogs rush to meet the intruder-friend and the cats scatter to their hideyholes, nary to be seen until a can of tuna is opened.