Today, Doug turned the water off at the street so that he could repair a leaky basement toilet. It needed to happen.

While the children amused themselves with dramatic ‘holding it in’ dances, the animals silently watched. When we discussed taking a quick drive to the corner gas station to use their facilities, the animals snored.

The moment the animals realized that their water dish was empty, all coping skills went out the window. One dog repeatedly licked the empty bowl. The cat stretched out on the floor in front of the empty bowl and sang a lengthy song of discontent. The other dog did the same thing she does for every single thing that causes her stress. She whined frantically and begged to go outside… and immediately whined and begged to come inside… and outside and inside and endlessly repeated the whining and begging hysteria like a deranged robot from Westworld.

SuperTween had the brilliant idea to fill the water bowl with ice cubes. The cat was not amused. He looked at it, jumped straight up in the air and ran to hide. The broken robot dog paused for a millisecond and then resumed her histrionics. The elder dog, always the wisest and best behaved furball, studied the ice filled bowl, looked at me, took her paw and deliberately held down the edge of the bowl until the ice had tumbled all over the floor while she never broke eye contact with me. She then lifted her paw off of the just emptied bowl, looked away and ambled off to find a napping spot.

The next time the alkaline water water bowl is empty when water isn’t functioning, I will save everyone grief and fill the bowl with the emergency reserve of bottled water.