Paws for thought

I have reached the age where you start to measure your life in pets - the companions you remember.

A friend of similar age has just had a new dog, a puppy, and announced it would be the last dog he and his wife would have. His reasoning was that, if the dog lives a reasonably long life, he will be 70 or so when she breathes her last. At that age there is no guarantee he can see out another dog or have enough working limbs or brain cells to look after it.

The first dog I remember was a Welsh border collie which had been ill treated and ran a mile if anyone raised a voice even to shout upstairs or even lifted an arm to scratch an ear. He was left in the kitchen one night when we went out and something must have spooked
him because he had tried to dig his way out through the wall, leaving a pile of splintered skirting board, brick dust and cement.

My father was doing some DIY one day which went wrong and made his feelings known. The dog, paranoid at any show of emotion, spooked and ran clearing the back gate and in panic ran into a main road and lost.

Next came Trudy, a sleek Alsatian, who lost a collision with a car in the same road after escaping to chase a cat or dog.

AMid the digs we had Jimmy - so called because he had "been done" as they say - hence Jimmy the One.

Jimmy was a tabby kitten from a pub which might have explained his liking for beer although where his passion for pineapple chunks came from I have no idea. The dogs always got on well with Jimmy partly because he treated them with contempt, taunting them when they first arrived from an alcove beneath a cupboard which they could not reach until the got bored and finally accepted he was top dog - even if he was a cat.

Following Trudy was another Alsatian, Darkie, a black, shambling bear of a dog who loved apples and would put his frying pan paws on your chest if you sat eating an apple until you gave him at least the core.

Darkie loved car rides and if he found a car door open was in like a shot - whether it was your car or not - and getting a huge, determined dog out when he wanted a ride was no easy task.

Darkie and Jimmy died of old age but at university a new generation arrived. A working housemate announced a girl in his office had some pups and would be taking them to be put down that weekend if she could not find homes.

Foolishly I said I would have one if she had one left by Friday. Come Friday evening and he arrived with two puppies. "Choose which one you want and she will take the other one to the vet to be put down on Monday."

Executioner I am not. So I had Kaba and Kiku, Japanese for hippo and chrystanthemum, supposedly Alsation and Labrador crosses but with a few more breeds in there as well.
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Kiku eventually had pups - I awoke one morning to find her next to me on my bed delivering six pups - and when I left London she stayed with flatmates while Kaba stayed with me.

After being an only child, so to speak, for seven years after I was first married, he looked aghast when first one son and then his twin appeared when they returned home from hospital but he would have died protecting them. Whenever we were out he knew instinctively when we were about a mile from home, my wife's parents or my parents.He managed a ripe old age before we and the the vet said his body had had enough.

We decided not to have any more pets after that which lasted all of two months before Abby arrived. Abigail Charlotte, named by my boys, was a King Charles Cavelier who loved walks - up to a point. When she had had enough she sat down and that was it. One day, when she was an old lady, her heart gave out.

That was it. No more pets. So currently we have Missie - as in miserable - a tortoiseshell who found us. She had apparently been living rough for about six weeks I discovered, and even found who her owner was so, like a good neighbour, took her back to her home which was down our road. The women, who had several cats, said Missie had not liked the horde of kittens in the house and said I could keep her if I wanted.

I graciously declined and set off home. Missie beat me to it and was sitting by the fire when I arrived and twelve years later is still there. And still moaning as the world's most talkative cat.

Along the way there have also been numerous rabbits, guinea pigs, fish, Russian hamters, stick insects and a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig called Jezabel . . . don't ask.

Will Missie will be the last of the line? Who knows? Once you measure your life in pets it is difficult to stop.