Pet dynamics

   Since the passing on of our two oldest cats, the animal dynamic has changed in our house. The male dog, Monty, no longer feels his position as alpha male is threatened by the alpha cat and doesn't mark his territory in the house any more - if only we had known the cause! The spayed female dog, Susie, hasn't noticed their absence and continues to sleep all day on the couch or a sunny corner of the garden, with the occasional mock charge at the remaining indoor cat, Felix, to keep the blood circulating. Felix thinks she is an orphan now and rushes wildly about the house, jumping over furniture and rolling herself up in the rugs to provide variety in her routine. She runs up the support pole and onto the bamboo canopy over the deck (despite a fair-sized overhang) to make sure that no birds are nesting under the eaves - very handy, we don't have to get up there to remove nests any more. And at night she is all peaceful, snuggled on my bed.
  The beautiful pale orange chinchilla cat, Tigger, which lives outside even in the wildest winter weather has moved closer to comfort, sleeping on the top step leading up to the front door. Unfortunately she has further to fall than when she slept on the fence and we regularly hear a thud-thud-thud as she bounces down 12 or so stairs, Sometimes she takes the quick route and falls straight through the treads onto the bricks below. But she seems happy. The other day she came inside and lay in the sun along the back of a chair, so she must be feeling less threatened now.
  We are now settling down into some kind of pet normalcy, rather than maintaining a hospice for frail and incontinent cats. I hope it's going to last. My daughter is threatening to bring home a stray that has turned up where she works. She's a compulsive cat rescuer and is not in the least intimidated by my insistence that I want no more cats. She never listened before and there's not much hope that she's going to start now.