Who Are You and What Have You Done With My Pets?

The food saga has actually turned out quite tame and all four pets have been rather quiet and subdued as of late.

It's unnerving.

After a couple of days of dirty looks and reluctant munching, Puckett and Percy have embraced their new food enthusiastically and without incident.  Willow continues to turn up that pug nose of hers and will only eat three or four kernels of the original food in her cage where no one can see or bother her.  She is still a bit of an airhead about it though.  I fill her bowl and call her to come upstairs and jump in her cage and she will dance around in the kitchen mewing and watching me walk away with this look on her face like I'm taking sustenance right out from under her nose.  We go through this dance every day.  It's been over two months.

Other than that though, the animals are quiet.  Tess spends her days sacked out on the porch watching the world go by.  She doesn't even dance through the yard, chasing birds anymore. She barely barks at anything.  In the house she lays on her bed or on the kitchen floor and watches me with big eyes.  She will be eight years old in March so perhaps she is just getting older, but whenever I take her out for a walk or a run she has her old energy back and tears around like a puppy.  She plays with the Cowboy like she's still a puppy too.  She could be depressed because of the weather.  Or something else is up.

Puckett sits on her "throne" (a rather large box) and surveys her kingdom.  She doesn't even boss the other animals around anymore like she used to.  She just sits and glares at everyone.  And she definitely does not follow me around the house in the morning chirping and demanding affection.  She just gives me the hairy eyeball like I've done something.

Even Percy is subdued.  He usually runs around the house every morning announcing to the world that it's litter box time and then spends an eternity scratching the litter around.  Then he gets out of the box and runs through the annoucing that he is finished with his business.  Lately, he's in the box and out of it.  Then he goes and sacks out by the heater. Granted his normal bathroom behavior is rather annoying and gets old, but this new behavior is more worrisome if for no other reason, I feel like aliens have body snatched my animals and replaced them with Stepford "pet-bots." 

It's actually really just the worst thing.  Either everyone has had it with winter (and who could blame them, really) or else they are on especially good behavior because they have something really wicked up their sleeves, something extremely diabolical planned for me.

I'm having trouble sleeping at night.