Otters and lions and dogs

Last night for some reason we settled into watching a slew of nature shows on that animal channel on cable, which we never do, but I was scanning the tv listings for something that would really kill my brain, kill it good and dead, and there I saw: The Secret Lives of Otters.

Now, I am married to a man whose most cherished dream in life is to have a pet otter. Please, can we get an otter? It can live in the bathtub. It would go swimming with the dogs. It would be so cute. I would hug it and squeeze it and call it George. Please, please, can we get an otter, can we, can we?

I have - unreasonably, I know - shot down this idea every single time it comes up, but knowing the deep inner working of my beloved's heart, I figured the least I could do by way of compromise was to switch to the show about the secret lives of otters. And for a while there, I was starting to come around to his way of thinking, because DAMN. Those critters are cute. But by the end, Enrico looked at me sadly and announced that he didn't think an otter could be happy living in our bathtub.

Yet we had little time to grieve for this lost dream, because the parade of amazing animals marched on! The next show was about Big Cats. Toby likes it when we watch animal shows, because he is intrigued by the tiny little animals running around inside the box. Much of our enjoyment of animal shows in fact comes from watching our animals watch the animals. If it gets really interesting, Toby will get off the couch and sniff the TV screen, sometimes even looking around the sides of the television, trying to figure out, where did those tiny running meerkats disappeared to? Meanwhile Nelly looks at him in disgust, all Do you SMELL an animal? No. That means it's not real. Use your nose, dumbass.

So Toby was having a grand time watching the cheetahs and leopards hunt, and then they showed some male lions doing what male lions apparently do: lying around indolently, waiting for girl lions to bring them some damn food already. The animals are not interesting to Toby if they aren't moving, so he had settled back down in disinterest when the male lion ROARED - and I swear to god, Toby actually levitated a foot off the couch. I have never, ever, seen him look so shocked as he did at the sound of that lion. If he had pants, I swear he would've wet them. Which maybe suggests that he's not quite as dumb as he sometimes acts.