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

Wednesday August 30th 2017

Dear, dear, dear – as I say to Isis when when she is upset because something, like a prickly leaf or an empty beechnut case, is suck in her hair. It’s Sunday 27th, the very anniversary of her adoption and we fall out big time.

Daisy starts it.

A demure little cat, who mostly minds her own business, she spends the daylight hours upstairs doing kitty things, like playing in her crackle bag

making cosy little nests in the bed

and preparing herself for a good night’s sleep.

But, being a cat, she becomes restless in the early hours, sneaks out of the bedroom and creeps downstairs.

Now and then, I think, she pops into the back room where Isis is fast asleep, and has a good nose around, for sometimes, when I wake Isis in the morning, she leaps up as though stung by a hornet, and circles, sniffing and snapping indignantly.

It is certain that she now goes into Hairy One’s dining room on a regular basis, drinks from her water bowl and scents the feeding stand and door frame.

Neither Isis nor I have ever caught her in the act, of course. But we know. We know because Isis, trained painstakingly over the years to eat her food like a normal dog, begins to revert to her previous food defending behaviour. Instead of munching contentedly, she snatches mouthfuls of food while growling and barking ferociously at an imagined crowd of marauding creatures.

Sigh.

Human cleans carefully around Hairy One’s dining area with pet disinfectant.

But this doesn’t pacify Isis, and Human reluctantly goes back to the training routine. Every time Isis barks, her food is removed. When she calms down, the food is returned. After a few days of this, she improves.

By dog’s  breakfast time last Sunday, she’s almost back to normal.

The sun is very bright so we stay at home all day and Isis plays with her toys in the garden. She would like to stay out there until dark, and it’s well past dog’s tea time when I bring her in.

She’s very hungry. She sits nicely waiting for the signal to eat. But almost immediately after she begins her meal, she emits loud, growly barks.

I pick up her dish.

She flies into a fury and sinks her teeth into both sides of my hand. It feels like they’re meeting in the middle.

I give her a sharp smack on her flank.

What a horrible end to her anniversary day.

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