Menagerie a trois

This is my 100th post. Seeing as this blog is 15 months old, that’s not brilliant. Many of the bloggers I follow post every day or nearly every day and I am in a sort of wonder about this. Apart from the fact that some days all I could say would be a cross between ‘Ugh’ and ‘Wha?’, I think, as reflected by the fact that the only things I have to post about are the baby and the cat, that I just don’t have that interesting a life.

So, on that note the arrival of Maya the dog into our delicate household balance seems just as worthy of blurting out as anything new the spud may have done this week, such as, for example, working out how to climb into our bed from the floor using only his head for a safety net.

Maya is a lovely old grey muzzle with incipient arthritis who will attack any cat unfortunate enough to cross her path. It’s likely that she just wants to see what they’re about, unluckily this involves a certain amount of dog jaw / cat neck interaction which we’re keen to avoid. Sammy is a lovely, equally grey cat who is profoundly deaf and who would have to use his sense of smell to trap her sneaking up on him, if he still has one.

To put this in perspective, Sammy is 16 and Maya is older by as much as 2 years. They suffer cumulatively from arthritis, hip displasia, a heart murmur, ear fungus, deafness, incontinence, tumours, skin tags, vomiting and a persistent catnip habit. You would think that a tortoise could stop a fight between them however they are remarkably light on their claws and keen to have one last try for the title.

They've had one minimal confrontation and the ensuing bout of growling, hissing, back arching, leash lunging and tooth-baring mayhem had the Spud straining out of his buggy with much the same sense of glee which sees the frog straining out of his sofa whenever there's an F1 pile-up. Neither of them actually want blood, it's just the thought that counts.

The spud can't tell the difference between himself, the cat, the dog and his parents as yet beyond the fact that I doubt he will dive into Maya's chest and shake his head vigourously between her boobs the way he did to me at 'Sure Start' this morning. As far as he's concerned, we're all 'not spud' and equally open to abuse or adoration. He follows Maya around the flat literally squealing with delight and if he could keep up, he'd follow Sammy around in the same way. This means that should there ever be an actual confrontation involving 8 legs the spud would be right in the middle of it (10 legs then) and much as he can win in a battle between his ever-sharp nails and my bingo-wings, I would worry about his involvement in the war of the zimmer fur.

Thus, Maya and Sammy are being firmly kept apart and managing the feeding, sleeping and toilet arrangements for the three of them is giving the frog and I our own grey hairs.