I had a rough last hour of work yesterday.  This woman, who was a total twit, kept harassing me because she was at a store without a debit card, cash or checks and wanted to buy something.  She expected ME to do something about this.  Ummmm…like what?  I explained to her that there was nothing we could do unless that store had an account with us too, in which case we could transfer funds.  I felt like telling her that she needed to plan ahead.  Would you go into a store and try to purchase something if you had no way to pay for it?  No.  And the worst part was, she was in a clothing store.  She was not attempting to buy food or pay a utility bill.  Couldn’t she just put everything back and go back the next day?  I suggested she go to the bank and use a generic counter check to withdraw some money from her account, but she doesn’t drive.  Well, if she walked to the store, she can walk to the bank can’t she?  She was being very snotty too, and I finally had to get sassy with her.  It was irritating and stressful. 

I was relieved to get home from work and thought I would take the little ginger cat out for a “walk”.  It has been really nice the last few days and he loves to go outside.  I figured Dylan always takes him out, and now that it is still light when I get home I could take him out for once.  He was purring the minute I busted out the harness and leash, and was rolling around on the sidewalk completely happy.  I was talking to Dylan on my cell phone since he had called to tell me he was on his way home. 

And that’s when it happened.  I heard one of my neighbors come out with his two dogs.  In the time it took me to tell Dylan I had to go and take two steps towards Reno the two little dogs had come up on us.  This would be a good time to mention that they were not on leashes.  The neighbor called out that they wouldn’t attack Reno, and I told him that I was quite sure Reno would probably attack them.  He is a feisty cat anyway, and he has never been around dogs before.  Plus they were bigger and he was outnumbered.  When Reno realized that he was surrounded all hell broke loose.  He started jumping and hissing and being puffy.  He stood on his back legs and swiped at the dogs.  He fell down and they started biting him.  I managed to kind of get them away, but when I tried to pick Reno up (I know, I wasn’t thinking, I was just trying to get him out of there) he latched onto my arm and clawed me.  I let go in surprise.  My dumb neighbor tried to pick his dog up, but Reno had two paws worth of claws attached.  It was awful.  We finally managed to part everyone, but poor Reno was beyond calming down.  He stood there, poofy and hissing while my neighbor told me how sorry he was, and how his dogs had never reacted that way before.  I wanted to yell that he should have them on a leash, but I was much more concerned about getting Reno into the house.  So instead I muttered something about being sorry too, and tried to herd Reno towards the garage.

I ended up sitting next to my car try to coax him out from underneath until Dylan got home.  Reno was still growling, but Dylan managed to chase him out and get him into the house where he promptly climbed on top of the kitchen cabinets and refused to come down.  When we finally got a good look at him we found a cut on his arm and a missing back claw.  We were able to pin him and clean his arm, but he is still limping a little bit.  We also discovered that I was bleeding from where Reno had punctured my wrist during my rescue attempt.  Dylan managed to pin me and clean my arm too.

It makes me so mad.  I know that Reno was the one who struck the first blow, but if my dumb neighbor would have put his dogs on a leash it wouldn’t have happened.  I was able to pull Reno back, but I couldn’t keep the dogs off of him and the guy couldn’t control them either.  Grrrr……        

Today Reno saw a dog outside through the window and went flying back up on top of the kitchen cabinets with his tail all big and sassy.  It is sad.  Reno is sad.  I am sad.  My neighbor is dumb.