For my Task 4 play-date swap,
Buck was kind enough to send over Taleah! Meanwhile, my dog Sir Gordon Bean went to Buck's house for a visit. Thank you for agreeing to have a swap with me, Buck!
Unfortunately, the option to include backgrounds with pictures wasn't working well for me today. I tried changing the resolution and restarting the game, but no dice; the camera kept taking pictures of random rectangles nowhere near the petz. Sorry for the lack of visual context.
Taleah is a super pretty dog. I was delighted to discover that she has a little star above one ear! Her swirly coat is beautiful, too. Her tail reminds me of a white-tailed deer!
I figured I would introduce Taleah to my dogz first, hoping an introduction with petz who spoke the same "language" would be easier. As is to be expected with any sort of cat, however, my boy Lion had other ideas, and became the official welcome wagon for Team Tympanic.
Thankfully, they seemed to get along pretty well. They did some wrestling, and I couldn't resist including this picture; I love the funny faces petz make when they wrestle.
They also sang together a few times. It was adorable!
There was, of course, some inevitable tension when Lion decided to jump on a ledge. Taleah didn't like that (in all fairness, I've never met a dog who does), but the whole thing happened so quickly that I didn't even get a picture. Pretty soon, they were back to being silly friends together.
Both of them also did this kind of pose at each other, which I thought was a lovey-dovey thing, but maybe friendly petz also do this behavior? It was cute, in any case!
After a while, I decided to introduce Taleah to the two dogz still at home from my team, Benji and Jillian. They both decided to greet her at the same time, rendering Benji mostly invisible, ha ha.
Things got...a little dramatic from there. Fortunately, the problems had nothing to do with our house guest, but they certainly didn't show the Tympanic family in the best light.
I'm not sure if Jillian was feeling defensive about the food dishes I had out for everyone, but she definitely Instigated Some Things (TM) with Benji during this visit.
Benji wasn't exactly innocent, either. My trouble-making children started having an argument around Taleah instead of, you know, behaving like civilized adults. Sigh.
It wasn't all bad, thankfully. Benji courteously offered a paw to Taleah while his adopted sister was busy doing I'm not sure what in the background.
There were sadly an awful lot of scenes like this, though, with Benji and Jillian fighting and ignoring poor Taleah. Guys, you are seriously horrible hosts.
Taleah seemed a little tired after all of their antics (I couldn't blame her), so I put the other dogz away and let her take a nap.
I suspected Benji and Taleah might have more luck interacting if Jillian wasn't out, so I brought Benji back for a little more playtime after Taleah woke up. As I thought, things were much calmer. They even did some howling!
Since the solo hosting thing worked out for Benji, I decided to give it a try with Jillian, too. I was happy to see her and Taleah playing a bit of catch, and generally being goofy and playful. (Note to self: No joint dinner parties with Benji and Jillian.)
Taleah was sad when I put Jillian away; d'aww.
The last pet to meet Taleah was Tiger.
In the time it took me to save the above picture, they apparently decided that they disliked each other.
I wanted to end this visit on a positive note for Taleah, so away Tiger went. Taleah approved of this decision, ha ha.
I brought Lion back out, since he seemed to be the most consistently good host out of anyone. He and Taleah had one last sing-along before we sent her on her way home.
Thank you for visiting, Taleah! It was a blast to have you here!