Last month, Lee and I granted Millie the freedom of being left alone in the house – and she was a holy terror. We sentenced her to spending our working days in the crate. Well, today she was clean from a bath and sleeping sweetly on the couch when I was getting ready for work, so I decided to grant her parole. She’d spent all weekend at the kennel while we visited my folks, and she usually is so sleepy the first day back. But not this time. As soon as I left, it was party time.

I came home at lunch, and the first bad sign was the couch pillows. She had knocked a few of them down, which was proof she hadn’t spent the morning quietly sleeping there.

Then I saw the empty plastic container. I forgot we had a plastic bag on one of the dining room chairs, and with it pushed under the table I didn’t see it when I tidied the room. She had pulled a plastic container of cinnamon cake from it, and ate the WHOLE THING. Partly my fault though, so I tried not to get angry.

But the trail didn’t stop there. In the kitchen, there were assorted empty boxes, dirty paper towels, and pieces of styrofoam on the floor. The door to the pantry – where we keep the trashcan – was shut, so I was confused. Then pretty annoyed. I had put a full trash bag outside the kitchen door last night, in the laundry room intending to take it out today. She had managed to open the swinging kitty door leading into the laundry room and somehow work the bag close enough to tear it open and pull it’s contents through the door and into the kitchen. Great fun.

All of this before lunch.

This evening, she’s tried to make it up to me. She’ll flop onto her back and beat her tail on the hardwood floors and give me that pitiful Basset look. But I’m not falling for it. Her parole has been revoked, bail denied, and she is hereby sentenced to life to be served in the crate when it’s too rainy for her to be outside.