Dog Toys
For Valentine’s Day, I got Cali a pink porcupine stuffed animal that is holding a small red heart. When squeezed, the heart makes a smooching noise three times. Cali is a fan of all noise-making toys so I thought this one would be a hit. But instead of her activating the noise over and over again like she does with her other noise-making toys (turkey, kitty-cat, wolf, harley davidson bone) she actually spent an entire afternoon working her hardest to remove one of the arms from the poor porcupine’s body, all without the heart smooching once.
The other arm is hanging on by a thread. When Cali picks up the porcupine and throws it in the air, the one arm still connected to the body holds onto the heart (which is then connected to the other limb no longer hooked to the body). I imagine it screaming for dear life whilst flying through the air, “Save me from this beast! She’s tearing me to pieces!”
Sorry, little porcupine. You are now one of Cali’s many beloved toys. No matter how many times she de-fluffs you and no matter how many times I have to stitch you back up again, you will never be thrown away.
I threw away Clifford, one of Cali’s first toys, which was (of course) a big red dog stuffed animal. It had a few squeakers inside it’s long body and she got really good at finding them with her mouth to make it squeak over and over and over again. Cali had been diligently working on de-fluffing Clifford everyday until I found Cali with one of Clifford’s squeakers in her mouth. I was quick to remove it from her lips (which she was not too happy about) and then I went about picking up all the fluff balls strewn across the floor. That is when Clifford turned into a carcass: just skin, no fluff, no squeak.
It was sad, but he had to be thrown away. There is no use keeping a toy that no longer has it’s bounce. Plus it looked all ratty and gross so I made an executive decision…one that Ryan was not too happy about. Because this was one of Cali’s first toys, it was easy to see Clifford was missing from the small pile and when Ryan pointed that out, I did not think I had anything to hide. But I guess I did. Ryan was livid, “How could you throw away one of her toys? That wasn’t very nice! Go get it now and give it back to her.” That’s right, I had to go in the garbage and rescue Clifford’s carcass, which was conveniently floating on the top of the trash.
To this day, a few of Cali’s stuffed toys are no longer stuffed. They are just an empty carcass. But they do get their fair share of play, being tossed in the air and loose threads nibbled for hours on end.
