An Exciting Evening... or "No, that's not a kitty!"

Though I don't talk a lot about them, in addition to our two dogs we also have two cats. Isabel is a "tuxedo" cat, meaning she's mainly black with a white chest and white feet. Clementine is a predominantly white kitty with black spots. Why am I telling you about our cats, you might ask? Because of what happened last night...

Winston is usually a very sound sleeper. He jumps up on the bed and he is out until morning. So, the few times he has jumped off the bed, I've known that he really does have to go out. Therefore, at 2:30 this morning when he jumped down I said okay, turned on the outside light and opened the door (we are very lucky to have a door to the outside from our bedroom... something that being a dog owner now that I have I don't think I'll ever be able to go back). Winston headed out the door and ran up to the "visitor" who was standing next to our house. It was at this moment that I remembered why living in the country does have its disadvantages. I screamed, slapped the door closed (so that Tater didn't join Winston) and flipped on the light to grab my pants and shoes. Reid leaped out of bed (sorry for such a violent waking honey!) and asked "What?"

"Skunk!"

Once dressed, I ran out the door again, assuming that what ever was going to happen had. So fortunately for us, the skunk had sprayed, but not on Winston. Winston, being the sweet fellow that he is, was not chasing the skunk to kill it... I honestly think he wanted to play. In this regard, I'm very glad it was Winston who went out and not Tater who has a higher kill drive than Winston. So, when it sprayed, he probably thought "Ooh... this is an interesting smell" and stayed where it had sprayed. When I went out, the skunk was still running up and down the inside of our fence (no doubt trying to remember how he got in) but Winston was standing a good distance from it. I grabbed him and ran back inside with him. It was at this time that I could almost hear Winston's voice saying, "What mom? It looked just like our kitties. Why can't we play?"

Luckily for the dogs, Reid has a terrible sense of smell. So, he got to sleep in the bedroom with them for the rest of the night... I crashed out on the sofa. Luckily, I woke this morning to a dog who doesn't smell like skunk... we really lucked out on this one!