Julie's battle post 2

From last week. Julie's husband is now continuing with her blog. Julie loves her husband and her cat April and her dog Robin. We would spend a lot of time talking about our husband and the non-human loves of our lives. I have only taken this except because it touched me so much.

The animals know something is up now. April is our 18 year old tabby cat. April believes that any idea is a bad idea, unless it’s hers. If I put her on our bed (which she loves), she’ll immediately jump off. If I want her on the bed, I have to put her on the nightstand, which she’ll promptly reject by leaving it for the bed. So I wasn’t expecting much when I put her on Julie’s hospital bed. April was the only animal in the house that hadn’t had some contact with Julie recently. To my surprise, rather than immediately jumping off, she wandered around a bit and then settled down on what would be Julie’s lap if Julie were sitting up. She stayed there quite a while.
As most of you know, Robin is our 6 year old sheltie. He has a strong “weird” detector. If anything is weird, he’ll shy away from it. Things that are familiar can become weird, just because they’re in a different place or turned a different way. Being picked up is extremely weird. Being on furniture is not allowed. So when I picked him up and put him on the hospital bed next to Julie, I also didn’t expect much. Instead, he walked up to her head and sniffed her. Then he gave her a couple of small licks on the end of her nose, and paused. He repeated this a couple of times around her nose and face. I left him there, and he stayed another minute or two. Being picked up, being on the bed — all definitely weird. But still, instead of jumping down he stayed to pay his respects.