Betty felt older and wiser as she reached four years. She wore it gracefully, but was exasperated by Ralph and his incessant playing. He'd already stolen the little girl's affection, having followed them home and looking scared and hungry and absolutely tolerating the girl's unquenchable thirst for carrying a dog like a clutch and dressing it up like a penguin or an elf. You would think that with the immense amount of indoor urination he brought in his first few months in the house, the girl would have thrown him out. But it only made her laugh, almost as much as it made the lady yell and stomp and spray smelly stickiness from cans and then grumble as she wiped away the smelly stickiness.
He messed up everything. Now toys had to be played with quickly and guarded. She had to eat her food in her cage and do it right away in the morning or else he would wander in and vacuum it up in seconds. For a while, before he had gone to the vet's office for an overnight, he was overly attentive to her. All she wanted was to sleep in a lap, under covers, or eat the squeakers from things that squeak. But there he was, licking her weepy eye, sniffing the same spots, putting his paws where they had no business letting the rest of him be.
She realized, one night at what hoped to be the tail-end of a very very cold winter, that she had practically forgotten herself while he was interrupting her very cozy lifestyle. It was as if she had fallen asleep before he showed up, then was so jolted awake by his mania, that she hadn't had a moment to think at all in years. She decided that what she really needed to do was pay better attention, perhaps to take notes even, so that slowly she could regain her place as center of the house.
