The problem with having both cats and dogs in your house isn't that cats and dogs fight like ... well, cats and dogs. The problem is that sometimes they don't fight. At all.
Sometimes they collaborate.
There is one cat in our house who has nothing to do with anybody. That is Ali, and she is heretoforth my favorite.
The rest of them can bite me because the rest of them get along entirely too well.
There is this thing where every single animal (Except Ali! My favorite!) is positively obsessed with going into our pantry. There are tasty treats in there, you see. Between Penny's penchant for stealing the bread and Kiara's need to scream at anyone and everyone to open a can of cat food for her, there are always fuzzy beasts in the pantry.
Always.
And now they are working together to break in.
We are really very careful to make sure the pantry door is kept closed at all times. See also: there is a dog that looks like an ewok who can steal bread off of the third shelf. The pantry has to be closed. Recently I've been getting annoyed with the constant fuzzy under my feet when I go into the pantry, so I've even been closing the door while I'm in the pantry. It's like my personal hiding place right smack in the middle of the house. Nobody goes in but me. NOBODY.
Earlier tonight, I had to run into the pantry for a marshmallow emergency. Shhhooosh! There is so such a thing! While I was taking care of the marshmallow emergency, I had the door closed. It was with the door closed and a fist full of marshmallows that I heard it.
The crash of fuzzy into non-fuzzy.
Penny was chasing Kiara and Cody was chasing Penny and Max was in there somewhere, too. All four of them were tearing through the dining room at top speed and CLEARLY they had rammed into something.
I opened the pantry to explore. As I turned into the dining room to find the commotion, I screwed up. I forgot to close the door. I made it all of three steps before I realized I was being conned. I made it all of three steps before the largest of the fuzzies went tearing out of the pantry with a bag of chips hanging out of her mouth.
The fuzzies created a distraction and then sent in the biggest hoodlum to steal something while my back was turned.
And before you think I am crazy, Kiara had jumped up on the pantry shelf and was in the middle of stealing the cat treat bag when I walked in.
So, uh, when I'm living on the street and the cats and dogs have totally taken over the house, remember that today was the day it all started. Today was the day when the fuzzies proved that they are entirely too smart for their own good.