Animal house

I NOTICED, WHEN OUR CHILDREN were babies, that my husband developed an under-documented condition called ‘chronic night-related deafness’. This meant that as soon as daylight disappeared, so did his hearing. He was utterly unable to hear anything other than SuperSport from 6pm to about 7am, no matter how piteously the babies wept, or how loudly

I gnashed my teeth. Fortunately, the condition spontaneously disappeared as the children got older and started sleeping through the night. Proof that time really does heal all things, particularly time in the form of hours of uninterrupted kip.

But I am sorry to report that his condition seems to be returning, albeit in a slightly mutated form: he can now hear humans perfectly well; it’s the animals he has trouble with. There are five animals in this house: two dogs and three cats. The cats started out as one cat, but after startlingly slapper-like behaviour and two rapid teenage pregnancies, morphed into three generations of cat. Like some families, they are united by blood and a profound mutual dislike.

At precisely 5.50am every morning, all five of them line up outside our bedroom door, waiting. They are always waiting for something: to be let out, for food, for a walk, for the opportunity to mess up our carpet, for a pat or a stroke – any attention at all, really – and they like to get an early start on their busy day of unending demands.

At 5.50am, this general state of expectant waiting ratchets up several notches and becomes active champing at the bit. Jostling for position in the limited space outside our room inflames old hostilities and imagined grievances, so there’s a lot of hissing, snorting, huffing and scratching going on out there, with occasional thuds as one of them hurls itself, or is hurled, against the door. It’s a lot. Sleeping through it is a bit like trying to have a little nap in the middle of a Springbok scrum. And yet my husband can’t hear a thing. He is totally deaf until he has his first cup of tea, poor thing.

Finally I give in and head off to the kitchen, the animals surging around my feet. Lemon the boxer never takes his eyes off me. Even when I let him out to ‘do his business’ – the polite phrase, I believe – he maintains utterly shameless eye contact throughout. It is not a spectator sport, but I have learnt that if I walk away he will follow, bringing his business with him. Lemon is watching me for the slightest sign we’re going for a walk, and he’s not taking any chances.

While I put on my takkies, he starts casually limbering up: half a dozen donuts, several high jumps, a few triple somersaults, four backflips, one or two flat-out sprints up and down the passage, a bit of running head-first into cupboards, liberal head-shaking and gob-spraying… nothing too intense. We pick our way through the wreckage and head outside, where I have to wrestle him to the ground in order to attach his lead.

‘Lemon, heel,’ I say, just as they taught me in the obedience classes we attended every Saturday morning for at least 63 years. Which is Lemon’s signal to sprint straight up the hill, dragging me behind him. It’s more waterskiing than walking, really. Given the quantities of enthusiastic gob flying back at me, I should probably wear a wetsuit.

The Pug, meanwhile, now fed and watered, has waddled fatly off back to bed. The waterskiing is not for him; he prefers a sedate evening stroll through the long grass on the field behind our house. Despite his not-inconsiderable girth, Pugsley has delicate little feet that he places carefully and deliberately on the ground, stopping every 30 seconds or so to ponder afresh the strangeness of this life. Since his neck and his waist are basically the same thing, he can’t shake his head in bemused wonder at the state of the world, which is ideally what he would like to do. He settles, instead, for a thoughtful stare into the middle distance.

Lemon, who joins us unleashed for the evening amble, doesn’t grasp that standing still is also an option; he thinks there must be a problem. He roars off into the bushes, frequently bounding back to suck Pugsley’s head in encouragement.

My husband also often joins us for the evening amble. Sometimes I like to look back at the house – so lovely in the warm late-afternoon sun – and point out a bit of painting that needs doing, or a roof tile that needs replacing.

‘Pardon?’ says my husband, gesturing helplessly at the darkening sky. ‘I’m so sorry – you know, my ears.’

At precisely 5.50am every morning, all five of them line up outside our bedroom door, waiting.