I've been accused of not keeping my promises. By whom? Take a guess. His name rhymes with "stinky." Got it now? So I have been trying to plow through the work schedule around here and get far enough ahead that I could take a day off and I have finally made it. So, this morning, after checking the mail and my phone messages, I headed back home
"Inky! Where are you? Inky!" I had just arrived home and I had some exciting news for my pal. "Inky! Come here!" Around the corner he came, flanked, as usual, by his pals Pancho and Spots. I smiled and said, "Guess what?"
"Guess what! WE were asleep! I'm not sure we're ready for games."
"No, No. It's not a game, I have some news. I've told you about PetSmart. That's the place where you are welcome to go along with me to shop for all the things the three of you have been wanting. Anyway, I have the day off so why don't we go today?". With that everyone was immediately out of bed and dancing all over the kitchen floor. We loaded the three of them into the Jeep and away we went.
Now, traveling with Inky is always an experience, no matter where you are going, and this trip was special. On the way out to the car he had already kissed my nose and head-butted me twice. Once we were on the way, the questions started.
"What are we going to buy? You know, we haven't ever gotten our beds. And how about the new feeder we talked about?" About that time he got pawed by Mister Pancho and he turned to have a conference. You could see Miss Spots nodding her diminutive head up and down in agreement. Then he turned back to me and said, "We would like to test all the beds personally. I agreed that would be a good thing to do.
When we arrived it was quite a show in the parking lot. With these three little guys on leashes, we headed toward PetSmart. The automatic door opened and scared Miss Spots to death, but we finally got inside. Libby got a cart and I took charge of the leashes. They immediately headed to the rawhide bone display.
"Look, Look, John! Bones by the hundreds! I've never seen so many! Aren't we out of bones, John?"
"Yes" I said, "we are. But I have to find the bulk sack. These don't have but a couple in each package." We went a little further and picked out two bulk sacks of bones. Then we headed to the next row over where the beds were. "Alright, I'm going to put down some different beds so you can try them. See which one you like."
They climbed in and out of each bed, lying down in one, then just sniffing another. "We've decided on this one," said Inky, proudly standing in the middle of the biggest one, "and we would like to have three just alike."
I looked in dismay at the price-tag. "THREE of them? I can barely afford ONE of them! Perhaps you and your mob could look at a smaller bed - - say, something about your size, for instance."
They huddled, then came back. "We want the big one. We would be agreeable to ONE bed and all three of us sleep together. We feel the quality of the bed makes the difference."
OK, so we got the big one, but just one of them. Then we headed for the front to check out. All the way they were snooping every aisle, until we got to the toys. At that point Pancho started jumping up and down and pulling my pants leg. "What now, little pal? Did you see a toy you want?" He ran over and grabbed a rope toy and dragged it over to me. I put it in the cart, along with a couple of things that seemed to interest Spots. Then we got in the checkout line. The checker was a pretty girl so naturally, Pancho and Inky had to be picked up so they could flirt.
On the way back home I could tell they were very excited about something so I asked, "Hey, Inky, what's all the hub-bub about?" He hopped up in Libby's lap and said
"We LOVE PetSmart! When can we go back again?"
"Well, I'm not sure when we'll come up again, but you're welcome to come along when we do."
He seemed happy with that and he put his paws on my shoulder and gave me a nose kiss and a head-butt. Then, as he was retreating to the back seat, he turned around and said,
"We've talked it over and we would like to spend a few days there."
OH, BOY, what have I got into now?!
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