Pets provide me with unconditional love! (Except when they are annoyed with me)

The pets at my house are often annoyed with me.

We have a small dog and a small cat in our family, and they bring us incredible amounts of joy and hair.

And while I know they love us and appreciate how we feed them, house them and assist them in different ways, I often notice how I seem to be annoying them. Here are a few examples:

Insisting that the dog relieve himself before we go back inside late at night – I can see why this would be annoying, but why can’t he just try? We both just ending up standing outside in the middle of the night for a while, watching each other and waiting for the other to do something.

Looking at the cat wrong – She can be a nice cat, but sometimes if I look at her when she is not in the mood for people, she looks back at me with great disdain.

Not petting the dog when sitting near him – If I sit near the dog, he demands to be petted. He sticks his head under my hand, paws at my arm and looks at me as if to say, “You have one main job here, and right now you are failing at it. I’m not so much mad at you as I am disappointed in you.” And if I don’t return to petting him, he gets up and leaves.

Not constantly filling the cat’s bowl with new food – She can’t be expected to eat food that has been in the bowl for more than 3 minutes!

Picking up the cat food before the dog eats it. – He always looks so frustrated when I do this.

Petting the cat too much – The cat has a certain number of pets that are the perfect amount. If you go too far, though, she gets greatly annoyed and will bite you or just leave.

Petting the dog – The cat hates it when we do that.

Talking to them both about pets I had earlier in life – “More stories about Spike? That’s just great. Maybe I can clean myself instead,” the dog thinks while looking at me. If I talk about former pets in front of the cat, she will cough up a hair ball.

Opening the mailbox outside the front door – The dog hates that. He may sleep all day, but if I touch that mailbox, he barks and considers me a traitor to the family.

Talking to the animals about colors – They always look at me like, “Oh sure, orange must be soooo neat. Jerk. At least we can smell fear.”

Eating my own food – Why won’t I just give all of my food to the pets? How will they survive? Why am I so cruel?

Closing the door if I am in the bathroom – The cat prefers not to have any doors closed, and she will paw at the door or each underneath it in an attempt to get me to open the door, emerge and give her more food.

Taking their photos – The dog seriously hates this. I am not sure why.

Talking to them about my column ideas – They usually leave or go back to cleaning themselves. Little did they know that their annoyance actually led to a column idea! I can’t wait to tell them!

Opening a box of Chuck Wagon puppy food just so that I can see that little horse and buggy thing from those old commercials run through the living room – The dog loves the chase, but it is annoying when the wagon train gets away.

Referencing commercials from 30 years ago – That’s like 210 dog years ago, so I see why that would be annoying.

Writing columns about them instead of feeding them – They hate this. Actually, the dog always, and I mean always, has to go outside whenever I sit down at the computer. I think he is trying to tell me something.