I woke up this morning at around 1:00 am to what sounded like beer bottles clinking together… I went out into the living room to find a scene of tremendous comedy… our greyhound Zerina had apparently hosted a little party… there she was standing in the middle of the mess she had drummed up from our trash bag… On the floor was an opened packet of rice… used paper plates… opened cookie packets and open beer bottles…

This was funny enough but the kicker was that Zerina has a floppy stuffed fox that she carries around… and in the middle of this mess was the fox… sprawled across the rug like it had passed out on the floor!

Later

We have a cat, Chairman Meaow, who gets into all kinds of trouble.

We always say "Oh, what a good boy you are, Chair-cat." But we are liars. He chases around the wii pointer when we try to watch netflix, endangering my flatscreen, knocks over kool-aid cups, staining our white cotton dining chairs, knocks over vases full of flowers, and this last part...

There is a cabinet in our bathroom, under the sink on the second floor with a hole in the very back that leads between the floor of the second, and the roof of the first floors. We call that nebulous existence between floors Narnia.

Chairman Meaow insists on treking into Narnia at the drop of a hat. The only way to reclaim him is to shake a bag of catnip...

Our French Bulldog, Attila, punishes Chair-cat for us. First with an over-enthusiastic confidence that absolutely everyone is in love with him. His cuddles end up in Yokozuna splashes and slobber maulings for the cats. Attila is 28 pounds, and Chair-cat is about 18. He's a pretty brawny cat, but he can't deal with Attila's blissfully ignorant weight.

Then of course Attila tries his hand at beastiality, and attempts to mount the bewildered Chair-cat. That ends in a claw to the face and quick escape.

"You can't have my cocktail fruit!"

We have a cat - she's called Bonnie. When she was a kitten she was nicknamed "Frankie" (short for Frankenstein) by the family that owned her mother because she looked as if she had been cobbled together from spare parts of cat. She was a nightmare when we first brought her home as she had an awful habit of taking a leap at you from behind and and landing somewhere between your shoulder blades, claws embedded firmly in your flesh! This was particularly difficult to deal with if you were making pastry at the time! I lost count of the tops I had to throw away. Luckily she has grown into her name now and the only (indoor) leap she ever makes is onto the kitchen worktop if a can of tuna is being opened.

Hazel is golden retriever-beagle mix, which makes her a golden beagle or retreagle; basically a larger dog whose brain is 99% devoted to cataloging smells. From behind, you think "golden," but when she turns her head you see with a startle the more blunted hound-dog nose. It's like one of those kid's picture books that puts together the two different animals to form a new mythological beast. She's into food. She had a habit of knocking the sugar bowl off the counter and devouring the contents, so I had to get one of those restaurant sugar shakers with the hole in the top. She ambushed the birthday cake I made for my wife as well as my nephew's graduation cake. If she escapes out the front door, she'll always head three yards down from us because 10 years ago she found a bunch of dogfood in a bowl there. Her favorite dish is road-kill squirrel. Can't count the squirrels I've pried out of her mouth. She's a good old pooch.

My sister had a dog called "Poochie". He was a stray she stumbled across when she was on holiday in Spain. She managed to get him back to England, had him quarantined and then looked after him for the next....oh I don't know how many years (he lived a long and totally spoiled life). He was a cross breed of some kind - the mind boggles at which breeds might have actually crossed. Put it this way - if a five year old drew a picture of Dennis The Menace's dog, Gnasher that would be the closest you would come to being able to imagine what Poochie looked like!

My. 2












bloodhounds are sop spoiled.

I have a pet parrot called Libby. But everyone else calls her psycho. No idea why . . .

I'm going to offend the cat fanciers, but to me it's bliss to be cat-free. We had cats for over 25 years, and though at first I liked the two that started it all, they each became neurotic and troublesome. One of them lived to be 22, spending about the last 5 years on our bed, litterbox in the bedroom. A few of our cats were killed out on the road in front. I thought it a very good idea, when the last was run over, to call it quits, and there were no cats in house for 2 or 3 years. I liked it. Then a stray came around and spent a couple of winters under our large spruce tree. My kind wife gradually increased the facilities for him, until he had a massive heated igloo. The ostensible purpose was to get him to go into a cage and take him to the no-kill shelter. Well, instead of that happening, "Oscar" is lounging right now on the couch near me. I never would have believed that this wild fellow could be re-domesticated, but he is and now spends little time outside, clearly appreciating his cushy environs. He's a glutton for affection, too, and this makes it really hard at times for me to remember that I don't like cats.

Do NOT bitch about cats to me - I've got you all beat - I work for a company that sells cat scratchers and we have had as many as 40 "product testers" living in our office at one time. You know how many litter boxes you need for 40 cats? A LOT!!!! It would take an hour to scoop them all. You have to deal with crap in every job, in mine it's just more literal than figurative! I do own ONE cat, Daisy, and a dog, Charlie Murphy.