Posting days: Sunday and Wednesday and, sometimes, maybe, extra ‘news flashes’!

Wednesday November 9th 2016

Allow me to set the scene:

Ji. and I sit at a small table by the window. Ji. has bought us a swiss roll. I unwrap it and (foolishly) drop its cellophane into the little metal bin which is only about eight inches –  twenty centimetres – from my right foot. The room is very quiet as we demolish the cake.

Suddenly, there is a loud, metallic clang. It comes from the hall. We both jump and crane our necks towards the doorway.

There stands Isis. The loose rim of the bin lies on the floor beside her. She has the cellophane from the swiss roll between her front paws and is licking it animatedly.

We can’t believe it. Neither of us heard a sound. How the hell did she manage to remove the rim and the cellophane without making so much as a rustle, without touching my leg or foot, and without banging the rim on my chair or the wall?

We gaze at her in awe.

She must have reached into the bin and grabbed her prize, pulling off the rim accidentally as she withdrew her head. And when she lowered her head again to drop the cellophane on the mat, the rim must have slipped back over her ears and onto the floor. Hence the clang!

That’s my theory, anyway. Can anyone offer an alternative?

Isis is a very accomplished felon. I leave a tea towel on that same little oval table. Again I hear nothing. I just happen to lift my head from the paper in time to see Isis with one end of the tea towel in her mouth. She is tugging it down, a tiny bit at a time, and absolutely silently; she is trying to dislodge it from under a pile of table mats. I guess she hopes there is something tasty at the other end.

Next, she tracks down the tarte au citron (yes, that delicacy again) to where I have, unbelievably stupidly, left it balanced in an apple box on a rack in the porch.

I am just congratulating myself on lifting both shopping bags onto the draining board out of Hairy One’s reach. Good. But where is she? Arrrrrrgggghhh!

I shoot into the hall. Yes, there’s Isis. Unable to dislodge the box, she has re-opened its flaps and inserted her tongue carefully inside, at a right angle. Through the film top I can  see her long, pink tongue gently gliding across the lemon filling.

Fortunately, the two pieces have separated and she’s only managed to lick one of them.

So we share it.

She seems very fond of lemon.

Isis came from the Aeza cat and dog rescue and adoption centre in Aljezur, Portugal. For information about adopting an animal from the centre, contact kerry@aeza.org or  www.dogwatchuk.co.uk