My neighborhood was late to the table on cable (I’m sorry, I promise I won’t do that again).  To add insult to injury, we never even thought about it til way later.   Many years back we went to visit my brother in California.  My wife, an inveterate insomniac, was very happy to discover a large tv with cable.

My wife discovered Animal Planet and I don’t think the channel got changed for our entire visit.  I was pretty impressed too.  This is a major event as I am not exactly a fan of tv.  When we returned, we had somehow ordered Dish TV.  Amazing how this works, no?

So it came to be that Animal Planet became a fixture on the tv.  They have a good variety of programs, even for insomniacs.   I have a bit of ambiguity going on around the Animal Cops type shows.  On one hand you get to see justice done and animals rescued.  On the other hand it’s really horrible to see the things that people to do animals.

My wife read somewhere that leaving the radio on when you go out is good for pets because it makes noise and soothes feelings of abandonment (the dog and the cat prefer human company - see the pet stories on the black bar above).

After a while the radio wasn’t enough, so the tv started getting left on during trips outside the house.  No matter how I question this, I don’t get an answer I understand, so I gave up asking.  [Note to people in relationships: this is a valuable skill, sometimes known as Just STFU.]  Also note that leaving Lifetime on tv can be considered cruelty.

Attempting to understand this on a semi-scientific basis, I’ve been doing a bit of monitoring of the pets’ tv habits.  My wife would be surprised to learn that the kids don’t have tv habits, but as I stated above, I know better than to make the point to her.

It’s bizarre but Marshall (the dog) doesn’t do the Stupid Dog Trick<tm> of barking when somebody knocks on a door on tv.  Both of them are pretty oblivious.  In fact, if he could talk, Marshall would probably tell us that the tv is just annoying and only serves to distract him when he’s humping the cat (don’t ask).