Pleasure Palace Perimeter Breached

I was tucked in my bed with the man who loves me when the ruckus started. There were voices. A rustling that was too raucous for squirrels. Maybe raccoons. They're eating my apricots, and I'm too sleepy and happy too care, I thought. The next morning I remarked on the noise and took note that there were still apricots on my tree. I forgot about the night's wild rumpus.
Then this morning I noticed that a large glass candle holder was missing from my patio. I was disturbed, but had plenty to do to distract me. Still there was an uneasiness.
"Hey," I said on the drive home from the airport with daughter #2,"Did you by any chance break or borrow or move one of the candleholders from the patio?"
"No," she said.
An hour later the she was peering over my patio wall while I mused and paced.
"The hillside has been tramped down," she said. "I can see where they came over the wall."
Someone now knows I have a large dog door.
I tried putting the dogs and their pink velvet bed outside for the night. I sealed up the dog door with its sturdy panel. The noisy neighbors from across the street came home, and the dogs barked. The sprinklers came on, and they wined. I worried about Layla and her stitched up mouth. She's been known to eat dirt. What if she has a little dirt banquet while she tries to figure out why she and Lola have been exiled to the patio? What if she gets an infection? The vet tech showed me the tooth. With the root and all,  it was about the size of my pinkie.
So now we're inside on the couch--the three of us, and the man who loves me is asleep alone in my bed. I have a glass of wine, and the dog door is sealed tight. Which will be fine until one of the dogs needs to poo.
Well laid dog-sitting plans gone awry because of a candle thief? It sounds absurd, and what is all this swirling hub-bub? Who wrote this fraught little novel of my life? Ha Jin? Chinua Achebe?
I want motion-detector lights, padlocks on my gate and my garage, wrought iron rising from my patio walls that's too tall to scale. I want an iron security door that renders my french doors impregnable, and a high tech dog door that only opens for you only if you have a chip implanted in your hide.
So when I come back from Greece, I may have a party. We'll break the bottles after we down our beverages. Blue ones, green ones, clear ones, and we'll cement the shards onto the tops of my patio walls. You're all invited.
And meanwhile instead of staying in their pleasure palace with people who love them, Lola and Layla will go to boarding so the dog door, in my absence, can be boarded up against the creeps who scaled my patio wall.