Outfoxed

Food is the stuff of life, or so the saying kinda goes.  In our house, food is life – and forget the other stuff.  I once knew of a woman who cooked a roast chicken every day to leave in her fridge for the family to pick at when they got home from work and school.  At the time I laughed heartily at the idea, but right now I’m considering it, as the dash to the fridge inevitably ends in chaos and carnage as the last Frube is battled for, and deals are cut over the piece of salami that has sat in solitary confinement for the past week.  Slim pickings indeed, but the fact is that by the end of the month and heading towards pay day always means that my fridge resembles Mother Hubbards cupboard.  It is then that I go into Ready Steady Cook mode: Ainsley Harriott would be proud of me as I magic up a main meal out of a tin of baked beans, some dried apricots, the rescued bit of salami, some maraschino cherries in kirsch and some couscous (no, not really, but you get the gist…)Even the animals get in on the act – the cats are happy with the tins of tuna that I stock up on every shopping trip as if somehow Sainsburys will one day run out (unfortunately they don’t like Oxo cubes, which happens to be the other staple) – and Muttley cleans their bowls for them when they have stalked off with fishy hisses.

This year, pre-Muttley, we had fox cubs in our garden.  It was a bit by default really, the mother turned up with the tiny babies a couple of times in July, and then one day she completely disappeared and the cubs continued to come, looking a little forlorn.  It was when one of them injured his leg (it looked a bit mangled), that I relented, and every other day I would leave some toast crusts or forgotten-in-our-pocket-biscuits out for them, and they would sit outside our French windows into the lounge watching their favourite TV programme of Look at the Humans Watching Telly.  On more than one occasion after a night out I would share a taxi home with friends and one of them would joke ‘I see your guard dog’s waiting for you’, and lo and behold a nearly grown cub would be sitting by the gatepost to my house.

Of course, with Muttley around, things have reached their natural conclusion and after the initial fox and hound chase that I’ve written about which nearly ended in disaster, I had not seen them for a while.

Until last night.  On taking Muttley for his constitutional in the evening, we rounded the corner to our house which is at the end of a long, dimly lit public alleyway.  For this reason I always take a torch.  We were heading towards the beginning of the alleyway which is always very exciting to Muttley as it has a large public litter bin placed strategically at the entrance and which the foxes raid regularly – leaving a smorgasbord of delights for any dogs walking by (last week eldest son said Muttley downed a bread roll in one gulp).  Imagine my surprise when I saw a young fox standing by the bin.  I was even more surprised when I recognized its mangled leg.  As we approached cautiously, Muttley’s ears flattened to his head, and he went into the Collie Stalk position.  The young fox looked mildly interested, cocked its head to one side and sat down for a better view.  Neither youngster was going to give in, and I found myself on the end of a lead watching a battle of wills.  Muttley crawled forward, the fox looked interested.  He continued to watch.  We were a metre and a half away from one another.  No sound had been uttered.  Rather like a nervous hostess I was the first to give in and started babbling to them both, not really sure what to do.  The spell was broken and the fox scampered off into the bushes, Muttley charged forward barking and I nearly ended up in the litter bin.

As I said, it’s all about food.  Muttley has the garden, the fox has his food bin and the rabbits in the field by us, and the balance of nature is restored.  Meanwhile, who’s for salami, bean and apricot couscous served with a maraschino cherry in kirsch jus?

Dog and Bone

It used to be relatively simple, communication.  To get in contact with loved ones you either had to make the effort to visit them, or write a letter, or in times of bad news, send a telex.  I remember ‘in the olden days’( as my kids refer to my childhood with more frequency) when answer phones revolutionized our lives, and the fax machine was like something out of Star Trek.  Some people, even in those days couldn’t get the hang of technology – a very dear old soul in the office where I worked regularly used to send a fax by picking up the handset and shouting ‘I’m sending you a facsimile right now!’, and to carry a mobile phone entailed a handbag the size of a small suitcase. 

And then there was the car phone – originally attached by a long curly cable reminiscent of the original telephones, the driver had to act as a contortionist as he spoke into the phone, balancing it on his shoulder as he drove.  Even the later speaker phones were so directional that you found yourselves leaning so far into the windscreen area that your view of the road became rather like playing a game of Mario Karts than reality.

Now we are bamboozled with communication – emails superseded by social media and cloud systems mean that anything we write or say can be communicated instantly and around the world.  Now this isn’t necessarily a good thing – not everyone, for example, wants to read a blog such as this when they wake up to their morning cuppa.  And although you get to know the ins and outs of peoples lives, sometimes it gives you too much information.

My friends and I have always preferred the phone as a mode of communication.  The good old Dog and Bone. A phone call in my house is peremptory if you are male, ‘Yes, yes, no, see you’, pretty much covers it. However, I uphold the record for females everywhere with long phone calls to all of my friends.  (One lasted 3 hours – I know because BT were running a special at the time, free calls under an hour and so my friend kept ringing off at 59 minutes and then calling back again).  I even have my own phone chaise longue, and a retro silver phone with a curly lead so that I can give whoever calls my fullest attention by staying in one area.

This drives all the men in my household mad  - including Muttley.  As toddlers the kids used to get louder and louder whenever the phone rang, so does Muttley.  And it was always during a phone call that they got up to mischief … need I finish the sentence?

R called me from her car phone – now although I know a car phone is the necessity of a busy executives and mums, and indeed all of my meetings and appointments tend to be made via a journey somewhere – I do find a call from a car phone slightly irritating for two reasons, you don’t know who else is in the car, and the signal is often rubbish.  The latter was the case in this instance and as R was giving me the juicy gossip on what Alpha Mum had been up to in the car park at school, I was finding it hard to follow – especially as at that moment Muttley decided to bark…

‘Aahh’ said R. ‘Is that the dog?’ and carried on, as I vainly flapped the dog away and threw one of his tennis balls to occupy him for a split second.  Toddler like he was back for more and again I threw the ball and he disappeared.  In and out of signal area the phone went as the story progressed and it required absolute concentration interjected with a few ‘Noooo!...  She didn’t….she never…’s’ to keep the communication going.  At this point I realized that Muttley was too quiet.  And like toddlers, when they are quiet, they are up to no good…

‘Anyway, what I really phoned about was…’ and at that point R cut off completely without a crackle, or a crossed line, or a goodbye.  I shook the phone, nothing.  Then I looked up.  Unlike a toddler, dogs have sharp teeth…Muttley was sitting there, severed phone wire in mouth, looking immensely pleased with himself…

My mobile rang.  ‘I think we got cut off!’ said R.  I rolled my eyes at Muttley ‘You have no idea how true that is’, I sighed…

Black Dog Day

Today was one in which Winston Churchill would describe himself as having a ‘Black Dog’ day.  Being a natural optimist, I very rarely get them, but when that little Black Dog comes snapping and snarling into your head – often for no reason at all – it then becomes a huge challenge to chase it away.  And so it was that I found myself this morning feeling as if I was walking uphill in treacle, unable to focus on the task in hand, surrounded by the ever increasing chaos of the house and the never ending jobs that needed doing.  To cap it all, it was raining again.  Not your delicate little English drizzle, but a full blown downpour that was causing no end of flooding problems throughout the UK, but mercifully not in Mytchett…

In vain I tried half heartedly to engage Muttley in a game of catch – often a little dodgy indoors when you have laminated floors throughout and a ball.  Not only does the ball bounce extraordinarily high, but the game resembles nothing more than ice hockey as the dog, racing towards the ball at high speed, ends up splayed bambi-like slipping and slithering towards an immovable concrete wall.  We abandoned that and tried to play with Foxy.  Now from previous blogs you will all remember one of his favourite stuffed toys, but Foxy is his absolute flavour of the week.  Resembling an old lady’s fox stole, it is sold in many pet shops as a dog toy – presumably because its head is stuffed with a ball and its backside squeaks…  Now whilst Muttley is exceedingly good at sharing his toys – with this one he has enormous difficulty in squashing his natural inclination to guard against anyone else playing with it.  So it becomes a slightly one sided game, with one throw and then about five minutes cajoling to get it back to throw again – not great when you have a little Black Dog in your head…

So I put on my coat, called to Muttley and we braved it into the rain…

First stop, the canal centre, where a very old lady wheezed into view with an equally old and fat spaniel on a lead.  Muttley careered up to the dog with me hanging on to the end of his lead.  “Oh don’t mind her”, the old lady said conversationally, “She’s as daft as a brush, can’t let her off the lead as she can’t remember her own name”.

“Oh dear”, I said, as I surveyed the doe eyed spaniel, “I guess she’s very old?” 

“Oh, it’s not that, she’s never known her name…Now, where am I going?” and after gently pointing them in the right direction, the elderly companions went on their doddery way.  Muttley strained hard at the lead as we approached a lady with two portly chocolate Labradors and a Jack Russell which was circling the trio and yapping at full throttle.  After various niceties (“Jolly nice dog, how old?” “5 months”) she gave me the benefit of her advice.

“What you need to do is let him off the lead and let him roam.  Then you need to call him, catch his eye and call him again.  If he doesn’t come to you – simply run off in the opposite direction!”

I eyed Muttley dubiously, who had brightened up considerably at the thought of having some freedom.  “I may try that another day”, I said weakly,  “When it’s not raining”.

“Stuff and nonsense, it’s worked for me”, retorted the lady as she marched on – the Jack Russell had disappeared completely at this point and as we strolled along I could hear her running and shouting herself hoarse  “Jasper!  Jasper! Where are you?  Come Jasper!”

We turned the corner and there we saw a vision of beauty in black and white…Her eyes a pale blue colour, her fur long and silky, and she turned and looked at Muttley and he melted…  A border collie who reveled in the name of Skye, and who coyly deigned to come over to my drooling pup. As her dad and I jumped rope over the retractable lead the two dogs played Bash Each Others Noses and Smack Each Others Heads on the Ground in only the way young lovers could.  With promises to meet again the two dogs departed with lingering backwards glances…

As we ambled home, the sun began to peep out from behind the clouds. As I sat at the computer with renewed energy and resolve to get some jobs done, there was a gentle nudge of a wet nose on my elbow.  There sat Muttley, with Foxy in his mouth, which he then laid with great care on my knee and with enormous trusting brown eyes.

And the little Black Dog in my head slunk off snarling – he knew when he had been beaten…

Soldiering on

A lot of people have one major problem when it comes to owning a dog - and that is the issue of dog poo.  G is very fond of his garden, as are the boys - although whereas he prefers to potter about trimming hedges and pruning flower beds, they are more interested in perfecting the moves of Monty Panesar with a cricket ball or hoofing a football into a makeshift goal.  Either way, the garden does not really lend itself to squelchy little landmines, and so we have had to compromise, and Muttley takes himself off quite happily to a selected corner of the lawn which I then clear at a regular basis.  This,on the whole, all works amazingly well, and with the odd exception we have had relatively few accidents when it comes to house training.   On reading several websites  I have discovered that if you have set words for set functions and lots of praise you can actually get the dog to perform in his special place on command - or so the theory goes.  And so he has learnt that Wee Wee and Poopie gets treats and cuddles.  That's the theory...

In practice it is working a little too well, and now that I am taking him on slightly longer walks, I am finding that he is straining at the lead to get home so that he can go to the loo...  So on a strategic rethink I have taken to stopping at various points near doggie bins etc and giving him a command, to which he normally looks as if I am barking (excuse the pun) mad, but on the odd occasion he gives in.

Our walks are getting a little more adventurous, being blessed in our area with an abundance of parks and woodland, and it was thus that I decided to go to our local ranges - which are woodlands dedicated to the public, but with several zones in which the British Army train, Cub Scouts camp, Girl Guides learn survival skills and little boys design marvellous mountain bike ramps out of the hills, rocks and sand that nature provides.  Against the far away sound of rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire in the protected zones where civilians are not allowed, the birds sing and the occasional deer will peek out at what you're doing in his wood.  Dogs and their owners splash happily in the puddles left by tanks on exercise and on the whole civvies and soldiers rub along quite well. Indications of past training exercises are apparent on every tree which is emblazoned with a blue cross here, a red circle there, and occasionally a tatty temporary sign with a grid reference unintelligible to all but those in the know.

So there we were, it had been a rainy and blustery night and the ground was sodden, but the crisp air was full of good smells for a little dog and even I was glad to get out and clear my head of a particular work project that I had hanging over me.  We had been going for a good 20 minutes or so,  a larger crowd of dog walkers in the horizon, and others passing by ('Lovely dog - how old?' '5 months') and both puppy and I were walking companionably side by side, with the retractable lead behaving itself and all was well.

We chanced upon a small clearing, with a bivouac sitting just below a small incline. For those of you who don't know what a bivouac is, it is essentially a small manmade shelter made of small branches, twigs and leaves and can be knocked up by any hardy Cub Scout.  There was evidence of an abandoned camp fire, but not much else, and I wondered if during the night the campers had simply given in to the weather and gone home. At that moment Muttley, who was straining at the leash, decided of his own volition to relieve himself on a small bush to the side of the bivouac.

'Good boy!' I shrieked in delight 'Wee Wee!'  just as the bush moved upwards and a small muddy face peered from underneath the camouflaged helmet.  Muttley leapt back and started a frantic barking in alarm as all the other bushes began to giggle and shake in mirth and a whole host of muddy faces popped into view.

Amid profuse apologies we made a hasty exit before the 'enemy' approached... and both of us will make a mental note to check all foliage in future...

Have a great weekend everyone!!

A Step Ahead

There's something about the third step in our house.  Pre- puppy it was used as a stop gap for stuff that was going upstairs from downstairs.  The kids sit on it to tie up their shoelaces, I use it to tug on my boots every morning.  Before Muttley, Lapcat regularly used it as an inconvenient lounging step over which you launched yourself at great peril either up or down the staircase trying to avoid her outstretched paw which sometimes, for a little feline laugh, might have claws that suddenly spring out and swipe you on the ankle.  And then of course it has been used, over the years as the Naughty step, where badly behaved children sit for their time out, with miserable faces and clenched fat little fists until they have done their penance...

All of this does not really add up to the fascination that Muttley has for the third step - but almost from day 1, he has adopted it.  Give him a treat, and there it is eaten.  During wild and noisy play with the boys, that is where he takes his ball, and that is where (much to Lapcats disgust) he lounges, surveying the chaos that he has left behind once he has shredded a dropped tissue on the floor below...

This morning I was in a bit of a rush, having had to do a school run, then a meeting and then back home to do some work (a delayed project that really I couldn't put off any more), and having cooked some bacon for the boys breakfast I decided to leave the remaining three pieces to cool down, perhaps to have chopped up in a salad for lunch (if I ever got round to it).  Like a responsible puppy parent I left the plate of congealing bacon far back on the counter where Muttley had no hope of getting it, and disappeared upstairs after the usual morning crisis - in this instance a lost school tie...

On coming downstairs, and into the kitchen, I noticed Lapcat sitting on the counter by the plate, washing behind her ears with a satisfied smile, and Muttley licking his chops.  Two of the three bits of bacon had disappeared...

 I have a feeling that maybe the third step may have to come back into use as a Naughty step once more...

Leading Astray

I once had a very doggy friend who was extolling the virtues of retractable leads, ‘Wonderful invention’ she yapped, ‘wish I could use it on the kids – solve a lot of problems…’  Over the years I have at times heartily yearned to use one for the boys, from the toddler tantrums in the supermarket to the present willful and pointed disagreements over whether to have a haircut.  So it was with a great deal of confidence that I acquired one for Muttley from a lovely little pet shop in North Camp, a village not far from us, where I was advised on which retractable lead to buy (I had thought that it was just a matter of selecting a colour…but oh no…)

Armed with lead, and very excited pup, and a bag full of treats, we set off on our first adventure to the local park.  Now those of you who have dogs know that anyone else with a dog will stop and talk to you.  Combine that with a naturally enthusiastic puppy who has been pretty much housebound for most of its life, and you end up talking to quite a few people. 

Stop, start, heel, slow…we were doing well, until a woman approached with six dogs cavorting around her heels.  Only one was on a lead and he was wearing a muzzle.  Now I’m not sure why, but I am always wary of dogs wearing a muzzle – ridiculous, because actually if they have any issues it is normally solved by the muzzle.  Muttley on the other hand had never seen anything like it…Dashing up to him, with me vainly trying to find the stop button on the lead, we careered into both woman and muzzled dog, which with one whimper charged off in the opposite direction… ‘Nice dog, how old is he/she?’ panted the woman, ‘5 months, and it’s a boy’ I replied red faced.  Several pleasantries later and we parted company.

Next stop,canal.  Water.  Now this was an unknown. Muttley looked at it, his head cocked to one side as a duck sailed regally into view.  With one leap Muttley launched himself after the quacking bird and into the canal, luckily pulled up short by the lead so that only his legs were submerged.  Back on shore, we continued with stop, heel and slow, meeting a husky and his owner along the way (‘Nice dog, how old’, ‘5 months’) who ended up giving me the name of a butcher who made particularly fine pork and stilton sausages…and we eventually ended up in the doggy park.  This is a field allocated to dogs where they can run freely.  Of course I had no intention of letting Muttley off the lead, but there were a number of dogs running, playing and barking together which is too much of a temptation for any pup. 

A little Yorkshire terrier, on a retractable lead, came to join us, his owner wearing that slightly embarrassed look of a man obliged to walk his wife’s toy dog.  Muttley took one leap at the Yorkie and splatted him face down on the ground.  In no time at all the dogs were cavorting together, the retractable leads intertwining both around the dogs and the owners.  In vain we tried a polite stepping over the increasingly tangling mothers knitting, but at this point Muttleys legs were well and truly entangled with the Yorkies, and I was suspiciously tied up with his owner.  Trying to make light of it I bleated ‘I don’t normally get this close to someone on a first meeting’, ‘Yes quite’ said the man, his eyes looking from side to side in desperation as if he wished the ground would swallow him up.  Luckily at that point some very jolly ladies (‘Ah cute… How old?’'5 months') came to our assistance, and soon dogs and owners were separated. 

I watched, mortified, as the man and his dog broke into a hobbling run away from us. Muttley looked up panting.  Life was fun…

Cat-pitulation

The weather in the UK has been getting progressively wetter and colder as we head towards winter, so the camped out cats have been revising their principles.  The female (Lapcat) decided that war was better waged from within and moved her little furry suitcase back into the house about two days ago, preferring to live upstairs and hoping to taunt Muttley by casually sauntering by the stairgate every now and then. 

This would be an effective form of battle if Muttley was remotely interested, but it would appear that he is more excited by the prospect of building a shoe mountain by the stairgate in order to keep her on that side.  He very gently places one of each pair of shoes by the stairgate, along with his stuffed toy, a rawhide chew and a bouncy ball,  and every morning before the school run  'Where's my shoe?' becomes a familiar cry...

Tomcat held out a little longer, and cut a forlorn figure in his lone vigilante stance in the garage, preferring to do a nighttime raid on the kitchen when Muttley was safely in bed.  Realising that perhaps his sister had had the better idea, he moved himself into the kitchen yesterday, safely out of reach on a tea towel that had been abandoned on the counter - and carefully positioned himself above a radiator.  This is where he now sits, and after a week, we now have our very own Upstairs Downstairs living procedure...

The Dinner Party

It's always a very mixed reaction in our house when I announce that we're having a dinner party - the boys are always immediately very excited about the opportunity to act as chief food tasters and G looks as if he is entering an execution chamber.  This is not because he is unsociable, but rather because of the furore that surrounds having a dinner party in our house.  Not only does the normal mess have to be cleared away, but there suddenly springs up a requirement not only for our house not to look normal, but to look like no-one lives in it at all.  So any clutter gets shoved in boxes, children get scrubbed to within an inch of their lives, everything sparkles and gleams, cushions are plumped and husbands are despatched upstairs to change the trousers they have just donned for the evening... Throw a puppy into the mix and anything could happen...

With this in mind, and knowing that Muttley could not just be filed away in a box for the evening, I decided to warn everyone about attire and then take evasive action and get my guests inebriated, hopefully not before I did and forgot about the food...  All the guests arrived, the ladies in trousers, with the exception of R, who always loves a chance to get glammed up, who turned up in a gold sparkly dress... 'Nice dress,' I said, just before Muttley launched himself at her enthusiastically and she disappeared beneath licks and wags.  A couple of strawberry mojitos for all later, she had totally recovered herself, but the dog had disappeared beneath a torrent of kisses from T who was desparately trying to convince her dog agnostic husband of the benefits of being a dog owner.

For the actual dinner, Muttley lay happily in his bed, as I had cooked a curry, and didn't fancy seeing many happy returns of the spicy food the next day. However, I relented when it came to dessert, as in fact it had turned out a little disastrously, and what was supposed to be a sophisticated cardomom and bitter chocolate torte resembled something more like Angel Delight...  So as a distraction Muttley was allowed to the table to entertain with his newly learned tricks Sit and Paw while I assembled the cheese course, and by this stage even Sit and Paw were greeted with rapturous wine fuelled applause.  It was then that I discovered that  Muttley liked cheddar...  Whilst T was going in for another embrace (her husband was studiously avoiding her pleading eyes) Muttley nicked a piece of cheese from the plate and held it hidden in his mouth until she let him go.  Then he polished it off.  In disgrace, he sat at my feet, where I confess I forgot about him as we had recently bought an electric shock game that the men were playing with immense bravado at the other end of the table. Rather like a TENs machine crossed with Pass the Bomb, the excitement was in who was going to be given the electric shock.  Unfortunately it happened to be G, who leapt up from the table, showering both the man opposite and the dining room wall in red wine.

On seeing that the man of the house was in extreme danger, and having an opportunity to redeem himself, Muttley jumped up barking, hurling himself towards G and the women started throwing napkins helpfully over the wine soaked man.  Chaos ruled...

Now of course in the excitement, I had forgotten about the cheddar... and the puppy rule, that what goes in, comes out.  As I was saying a fond farewell at the door to my guests, one man said to another 'Hey mate, that curry's moving through you fast!'  'Not me' the other man replied... and suddenly we all clicked - our bleary eyes focussing in on two perfectly formed poos...'ARGHHH' shouted R, her fingers clamped over her nose and mouth, another lady guest looking a little faint...

Muttley simply sat there, his head to one side, and yawned.  It had been a long night and he was dog tired....

A Cautionary Tale

 Never forget that puppies are really toddlers dressed up in fur… Yesterday Portuguese M came round to help me clear the house of chewed up bits of toys, clothes on the floor, those mysterious balls of fluff that appear in the corners of a room – all in preparation for the dinner party I am holding tonight. Now Portuguese M is a garrulous type of woman who has a story for every event but with an accent to go, and one has to really concentrate, particularly when the genders get mixed up and strange malapropisms appear.And of course once she saw Muttley she launched into her very own tale of how intelligent these ‘leetle doggies’ were.  Rather like a bored toddler waiting patiently by her side, I could see Muttley’s attention begin to waver, and as they were both by the open kitchen door, he began to do a surreptitious back shuffle towards the garden. Just then, from out of nowhere, a fox appeared on the lawn, and with a great whoop of joy Muttley shot after him, following him through a previously undetected hole in the fence and into our neighbours garden.

Now we live on a quiet lane, but our neighbours face on to the main road that runs through Mytchett, and I can’t vouch for the security of their fencing as they don’t have a dog.  So lead in hand I ran down our lane and out along the rat run that takes you into and out of, the village.  There was Muttley, panting in excitement as I approached him, his f ront legs splayed out slightly, ready to run. I commanded him in my best Barbara Woodhouse voice to Come – and he ran straight out in front of the traffic.

Luckily, the people of Mytchett are in the main dog lovers, and cars scattered everywhere in their attempt to avoid the excited pup who at this point had that look of bravado in his eyes that meant that he knew he had gone too far but didn’t know how to stop himself.  Luckily with the help of Joe and his mate from Joe’s Emporium (our local house clearance sale shop) we managed to herd Muttley into a driveway and capture him. Joe’s mate said ‘Border collie? I used to ‘ave one o’ those…They’re very intelligent they are, they can read your mind’, I was thinking, I hope he can’t read my mind right now…

So this morning G is on patching up fence duty, and I have booked up puppy training classes.  In the meantime Muttley sleeps, secure in the knowledge that today is another day.

A Dawn Surprise

 Now most of you know that I am extremely short sighted, and on waking up at the 6am alarm in the morning, I am usually extremely bad tempered. This is usually remedied by caffeine and so it falls to me to stagger downstairs, negotiating the new stair gate that the kids open with ease, but which baffles the adults every time, and trip over a very excited puppy who is delighted to...

be able to wake up to another day of play, play, play.

Imagine my surprise then, when I looked out bleary eyed into the dusky lawn and noticed (I kid you not), a bona fide Penguin sitting bolt upright in the garden. Now I’m no penguin expert, and Mytchett is not renowned for its colony of penguins, I do know that it wasn’t your King Emperor type penguin, but rather a small one with brown wings and a black head. To my horror, Muttley also spied it, and in one swift movement captured the penguin and started shaking it from side to side with immense growls before smashing its head on the ground. The penguin didn’t seem at all bothered by the turn of events and then I realized that it was in fact a stuffed toy… I didn’t know whether to be cross at the fact that even the dog has managed to work out the stair gate and sneak upstairs to one of the kids bedrooms, or glad that I wasn’t actually watching the making of Happy Feet 3: the Murder….

Cats v Dogs

The latest on Cats v Dogs: my cats have long been terrorised by two young cats who wear swanky collars and an air of confidence as they swagger into our garden. Because of their gangsta 'tude I've taken to calling them Ronnie and Reggie altho in reality they are probably Fluffy and Tiddles. Today one of mine was cornered in the garden by Ronnie (or Reggie). Muttley wagged his tail at Ronnie- whose confidence disappeared by the second as Muttley approached, and eventually he shot off under a bush and our cat sauntered off after him as if to say 'My brother's bigger than yours'. Which only goes to show that you can never tell how things are gonna turn out (and that I need to get out more!!!!). ;-)

Cats on Strike

Rather like the tented protesters outside Parliament Square this year, the cats have set up camp outside the house. I expect to see little furry paws clutching placards saying 'Kick butt to Mutt' and 'Feline rights for All'. And  like  some of the tented protesters, they sneak in at night for food and radiators before taking up their posts again in the morning... And so continues the circle of life in Mytchett....

The first Day

Day 1 and Muttley is already one of the boys-constantly wanting food and attention!!! He is (cross fingers) a delight to have around. We have already reenacted the cat scene in Lady and the Tramp and so far so good. Let puppy training commence...