Friday 12 May 2017

Luci's diary: foul, unfair, cruel punishment

They locked me up! In the bedroom! On my own!

Me! The good one! The well-behaved one!

See what I mean? Could I be guilty of anything?
I mean, anything?

Even my humans admit it. I do what I’m told. I come when I’m called, even if there’s a bit of mouldy bread to eat in the park. I stop eating Toffee’s food when they tell me too, even if there’s some left. I don’t persecute Misty, even though he’s a cat.

But they put me in the bedroom and closed the door. And went downstairs. To chat with their friends. And Toffee was with them. They left me there even though I was whining for all I was worth, with a few barks thrown in for good measure.

It was all because their friends had brought their puppy-human with them. He’s terribly, terribly small. Well, for a human that is. Ruddy great hulking thing he is, compared to proper-sized creatures like us. But he’s always going after Toffee, trying to play with her. They say he likes her, but I have to say he has a very odd way of showing it. He squeals and waves his hands around.

Now I don’t mind squealing in itself. We squeal a good bit too, Toffee and me. But when we do it, I know what it means. Mostly it’s when we’re playing. Sometimes it’s when we’re hurt. Specially if it’s me, squealing. It means I’m badly hurt, because I’m a brave dog and only squeal when it’s serious. It’s only nastiness makes human number 2 says “oh, there’s nothing the matter with her, you know what she’s like, squealing at nothing.”

What does he know about how badly I hurt?

Anyway, that little human keeps squealing and I don’t know what it means. So when he goes rushing over at Toffee with his arms flailing like some offensive weapon and squealing, well, I get worried. So I get between them. And of course I growl.

But human number 1 didn’t like that. She grabbed me and pulled me off the couch.

“She was going to bite him!” she said.

Bite him? I didn’t bite him. I never touched him. I just growled a bit.

“Yes,” Misty told me later, “but you were going to, weren’t you?”

“Well, not exactly bite. Nip a little maybe. Just a warning.”

“What, sort of, ‘keep away from Toffee, she’s mine and I’m the only one allowed to beat her up’? That sort of thing?”

“Oh, you make it sound so nasty. It’s only a little bit like that. Im mainly just being protective against other people. And as for Toffee, I never really hurt . Or only a little bit.”

Misty shook his head.

“They don’t like, it the domestics. You’re not supposed to hurt their puppies. They get very upset if you do.”

He didn’t actually say “puppies”, he said “kittens”, but you know how it is with cats, they get confused with their words and sometimes you have to help out by translating for them. So normal people can understand what they mean.

“But how could she have known I was going to nip him, anyway? I mean, I didn’t, did I?”

“Oh, she knows. She knows. That number 1, she knows everything. She knows what we’re planning to do before we’ve made the plan to do it.”

I suppose he’s right. Maybe she was a jump ahead of me. She’s really smart that way. Perhaps I might have been just a teensie bit aggressive towards the puppy if she’d let me. And if he’d continued.

Still, shutting me in the bedroom, alone. For something I didn’t actually do. I reckon that’s just going far too far.

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