Unlike the location of my sleeping, eating, walking, and playing preferences (pretty much anywhere will do for my favorite activities), I have high standards about where I like to poop. Ideally, it will be on a lush rectangle of grass approximately five by at least thirty feet, occurring between the sidewalk and the road, after five to seven minutes of intensive walking and sniffing.
This is why I love Ballard. Green grass bordered by sidewalks, trees and parked transport devices as far as the eye can see. Every day, I get to take my pick of whom to honor with my poop. Usually it doesn't have quite the intended effect because Mom always picks up my poop in a pastel-colored bag and carries it home. Now, I like stinky stuff (who doesn't?) and I do consider myself The Princess, but I still cannot understand why she does this. Is she going to roll in it later?
However, if one minute detail of the "outside" environment changes, suddenly all the joy goes out of pooping. When there was cold white frozen stuff (great for frolicking, not so great for sniffing), for instance, I only pooped once a day, and even then only because Mom got so stressed out when I seemed to be protesting.
Worse than the cold white frozen stuff, the greatest pooping challenge for me was the weekend we spent in a condo in Belltown. I love condos and I love new experiences (as long as they don't involve any gardening tools or skateparks), but when we got out of the metal transport device, I started panting out of anxiety. Not only was there no grass between the sidewalk and the parked transport devices, but the miniscule patches of dirt surrounding the pathetic trees had metal grating over them, which is something these paws never touch. I hoped we wouldn't be staying too long, because pooping was going to impossible. On the other hand, all the homeless guys did look like a great opportunity for barking.
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| Why, Belltown, why? |
I fell asleep fast my first night downtown, but I woke up about 2am needing to poop and get some attention. Panicked at the thought of not having my five-by-thirty-foot patch of grass, I started whining. After Mom finally took me outside, to my disappointment, the situation was just as I had suspected. "Outside" was still covered in cement, barely acceptable for number one, let alone number two! Add that to strange men within one hundred feet in the dark, and it was time for true panic to set in. If you didn't think a princess could growl and pee simultaneously, you would have been proven wrong at this moment.
After a few more hours of sleep, I really needed to eat. Maybe by now Belltown had gotten its act together and grown some grass? Mom wasn't necessarily thrilled and seem to grumble a lot on the way down the elevator and out the front door, but none of that mattered, as it seemed that there was still no grass! And it was breakfast time! Which means that it was poop time because poop always comes first to make room for breakfast! What to do, what to do. Apparently, there was no other option than to bark at everything that moved, which is quite a lot at 6:30am on Friday morning in Belltown. Now I've shown you, Belltown! Next time I come out here, you better grow some grass.
You might think at this point that Mom would take pity on me and drive back home ASAP, but instead we just went back inside for breakfast as if everything was normal. It wasn't normal. I mean, I was starving so I ate, but I was starting to hold a serious grudge against Belltown.
Finally, I pulled out the big guns. After breakfast, I started jumping and whining, a sure sign that I needed food or a poop. "You win, Belltown," I thought, suddenly certain that pooping would happen wherever it could and I wouldn't feel guilty about pooping inappropriately because Belltown deserved it. As soon as we were outside and at least a block away from the condo building, I squatted in the middle of the sidewalk and thought, "Take this, Belltown! Maybe next time you'll think twice about not having any cool, soft, green grass when The Princess comes to town." Now, let's go buy me an antler, Mom.
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| I own you, Seattle Center |
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