CAPTAINS LOG: 3rd March

DEAR Diary: Its 4.32am, yes, four fucking thirty-two am on Saturday morning and I’m up. Why you ask? Well, in a time far, far away, I used to get in from a night out around this time on a Saturday morning. Those times are dead. I’m up because trying to continue to sleep whilst my dog runs around the bed is pretty much impossible. I laid there for around half an hour, telling her to settle down…she ignored me. I swear, if she had fingers, she would have flipped me the bird. I knew I’d be getting up soon when Boyf rolled over and seductively whispered in my ear…’what the fuck is wrong with your fucking dog now?’ So here we are. I’ve just made a cuppa and lo and bleeding behold, she is now asleep next to me on the sofa. I want to kill her. I might kill her. At my house, I literally have to shove her out of bed. But when we are here…this times is pretty much the regular and it’s all because somewhere downstairs there ‘may’ be C A T S.
 
LAST Sunday my bastard dog Dolly turned 2.  In human years, she’s a proper teenager and don’t we know it!  Having said that, I don’t (thankfully) know any teenagers that shit all over the landing….as I said BASTARD!
 
ME, Beavis and Butthead had wanted a dog for so long.  Get a dog they said….’it’ll be great for your mental health’ they said. Fuck you I should have said.

I have part-share in Daisy who lives with Russ.  Generally, I only get to see her every other week and whilst she is a Mummy’s girl our time together is short-lived.  Daisy is the most obedient dog in the whole wide world, albeit she a bit of a loose-cannon!    She goes to work with Russ every day and at least three times a week she jumps in a customer’s car when Russ isn’t looking.  She also has a rather annoying habit of running towards vehicles that enter the yard.  She now sports a rather fetching high-vis vest…that’ll teach her! 
 
DAISY is a Border Terrier and we had such a great experience with her that we naturally thought my getting a Border would be just as fab…fuck, were we wrong!  Russ bought Dolly for my birthday.  He travelled to Northampton to collect her after we saw an ad online.   I love her, I truly, truly do but I think he got me a broken one.  She is beyond disobedient.  She doesn’t even flinch when you say her name.  She’s like Houdini if you open the door without holding her….just ask my lovely friend Marsh who very kindly offered to let Dolly out one day when I was stuck at work but didn’t move fast enough and Dolly was out!  To get a visual on this you have to imagine the SWAT team turning up and the commander yelling ‘GO, GO, GO!’  And can that Bastard run!  Thankfully on that occasion she turned left outside the door and not right.  Left takes her to the end of the cul-de-sac and right takes her onto the main road…she would never have survived it in a million years.  Even though she just ran around the end of my road, it took Marsh an hour and a phone call to her other half to get her back!  Marsh nearly had bloody heart failure…meanwhile The Dollster was having the time of her life….what fun Auntie Marsh is!
 
RECENTLY, Russ and I were out to dinner with his youngest daughter, her boyfriend and his parents.  Dolly has had a sleepover at their house a few times.  They have two dogs and one, Frank the Labrador, is, not to put too finer point on it, the love of Dolly’s life.  During the dinner, the subject of Dolly staying came up and even though they were sitting at opposite ends of the table, I noticed a look shared between the two other women.  I’m a Mum of twins…I miss nothing!  ‘Okay, spill it’ I said or words to that effect.  Then came the story of how Dolly had escaped whilst at their house and how she was literally body-tackled to the ground in a bid to catch her.  Thankfully, the tackle was successful…no thanks to Bastard dog.
 
I had a cat when I lived in Oxford.  I owned him in so much that I fed him, paid for vets, loved him, gave him a home but when he decided to come and live with me everybody in the village warned me that he was feral and wouldn’t settle.  Wanna bet I said with a smile. God, why can I never listen??? He tamed to a certain extent but not fully and that was fine.  I liked that he was still a wild one.  I remember my parents and grand-parents visiting and I had got some worming tablets for him. Now he was a nutter…of that there was no doubt.  So, my Grandad, who was great with all animals, got hold of him and wrapped him in a towel so he would be kept still whilst my Mum tried to pop the tablet down his throat. Fuck me, that didn’t end well.  He went absolutely berserk.  I think my Grandad ended up just throwing him across the room.  Needless to say, he was never wormed!
 
WHEN I first started seeing the Boyf he had an old Staffie called Roxy.  It was New Year’s Eve and I already had plans, so he went off to a party.  He called me to say he was heading home and to wish me a HNY.  A little while later, when he would have been driving, I saw a post on Facebook tagging him.  A girl he knew had seen another post about a lost Staffie.  How did she know it was Roxy?  Well, that Christmas, the Boyf’s youngest had painted Roxy’s ‘toes’.  The moral of the story is, if your dog escapes (like she did that night) make sure they are easily identifiable!.

THE Boyf also has two cats.  One is quite friendly but makes the most horrendous jaw clicking noise when stroked. It’s sad because she’s very sweet but that noise but other cat is beyond a weird.  Boyf always says she’s lovely and she needs to get used to you.  Seven years.  Seven years I have known that cat.  Highlights of those 7 years include (but are not limited to) sitting on the loo having a pee, she came in, started ‘talking’ and I thought ‘oh look at her being all sweet’…then she bit my hand!  Fucking thing!  My personal favourite ‘me and Tallulah’ moment was one winters day when I was going out and I went to put my lovey woolly snood on.  Thank fuck I checked it first…she’d shit in it.  Can you see why I’m not keen?

BUT The Dollster is more than just a bastard.  When the house is empty of my boys’, she’s there with me.  Another living, breathing entity that means I am never alone. When the boys are in residence and we all go to bed, she divides her sleep time between the three of us.  She sleeps for a couple of hours before moving onto the next room/person. And even though I can only admit it through gritted teeth, she really has been good for my head. I love the whole Pet Therapy movement and I feel Dolly has had a massive impact on my mental health. I never feel lonely in my own home. She’s there with me. I take her everywhere and if I can’t and I don’t have somebody to look after her, I won’t go.

THERE is nothing lovelier than coming home from work and being greeted like you are the BEST THING EVER! She makes me smile; it’s as simple as that.

SO what if sometimes she shits on the landing? So what if she could tranquillize a horse with her ‘bottom puffs’? So what if she will only come inside when I ether shout BUTTER or I play the ‘note’ sound on my phone?  So what if she randomly barks and frightens the crap out you? With her I am never alone. And I wouldn’t give that (or her) up for anything.

BIG SNOGS
Kitty xxx

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