Let’s do this together
COMMUNITY CORNER Edited by SIOBHANMcNALLY
The saying “one child is one, two are 10” also applies to animals. With at least three roaming the house, I’m beginning to feel like a public loo attendant.
The youngest of my dependents at just four months old, fluffy white goblin Ronnie, is giving me the most trouble.
Like a toddler with a death wish, he flings himself at everything headfirst – often my feet while I’m walking down the stairs.
He even managed to trap himself inside the folding metal baskets as I shut a kitchen cupboard the other day – and was almost extruded into kitten spaghetti.
Rockin’ Ronnie also keeps trying to chuck himself down the loo, which he will live to regret if I don’t manage to catch him in time one day.
Staying on the ablutions theme, the nineyear-old pug, Boris-five-bellies, accidentally relieved himself in his sleep on my bed earlier in the week, and I woke up in a warm, puddle of dog wee.
I know there are niche clubs frequented by MPs and judges for that sort of thing, but I’m not ready for rubber sheets yet, so he’s had to sleep in his own dog bed while we figure out if it’s a kidney problem – or senility!
However, there’s been a lot of passive aggressive digging of his Teflon-coated bed and flapping of ears, especially at bedtime, to show his displeasure at being downgraded to floor class.
Meanwhile, a bit like that episode in Steptoe and Son when the rag and bone duo split the house in two, two-year-old psycho killer moggy, Dan Dan, has decided to move her bed permanently downstairs to the sitting room, where she sits perched up high above the piano where the kitten can’t reach her. Yet.
The fluffy white goblin is obsessed with her – like a lovestruck teenager, and lies on the floor looking up at her adoringly, just grateful to be spat at every so often.
Luckily, Boz is happy to play with the goblin, but thinks I don’t notice when he manoeuvres their game near the litter tray in the downstairs loo in the hope of a tasty morsel – or poopcorn as we call it. He got his head trapped in the hood’s swing door this week, which has slowed him down but not deterred him. I’m thinking of adding black pepper to the litter, but knowing the greedy pug, he’d think I was seasoning it for him.
And lastly, the annual migration of the ant colony is back. OK, they’re not pets as such, but each spring they manage to find a crack in the skirting boards and start marching across the floors. It usually starts with finding one doing the backstroke in the dog bowl, and within days, they’ve moved into the fruit bowl, brought the kids and hung pictures.
I don’t believe in putting poisons down for pests – which after all, are only insects in the wrong place – so I’ve used loo paper soaked in white vinegar to stuff up the holes. The house now reeks of L’Eau De Chippy, but it’s better than Kitty Litter Cologne.
Email siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.
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