Olive, Mabel & Me : Life and Adventures With Two Very Good Dogs (2020) by Cotter Andrew

Author:Cotter, Andrew [Cotter, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

3. The floor in the vets

It’s just a double-whammy of awfulness. And no more needs to be said here. Moving on . . .

4. Oscar, the cat next door

This is not a fear, but rather a very strong dislike and I would say the feeling is mutual. Oscar is – and I say this with all due respect to our wonderful neighbours – a bit of a dick. Poppy, their other, more senior cat is lovely – genuine and straightforward, and when she says she wants affection she means it. Oscar lies to you. He is one of those aforementioned felines who calls you in like a siren, purring away, before attacking with a vicious left–right combination. He also clearly sees himself as massively superior to our two dogs, viewing them as slightly gormless. And yes, he may have a point. He therefore likes to sit on the roof of our shed and invite them to come and have a go. Olive does exactly this after she has either spotted him from inside the house, in which case she will launch herself at the window, steaming it up with a series of snorts and quite explicit language. Or I decide to tell her quietly that, ‘Oscar is outside and are you going to stand for that?’

‘Oscar’, you see, is one of the fifteen or so words in the Olive lexicon and you only have to whisper it for the ears to elevate, the tail to shoot straight out and for the big talk to begin. And it is all talk, of course. If Olive ever got out there and Oscar were not on the shed but on the grass, having decided to stand his ground, then she wouldn’t know quite what to do.

As it is, I suspect that both are quite happy with their role in this bit of garden theatre. Olive can do a bit of shouting and swagger around: ‘You are very lucky to be out of reach, my friend, or you would be in a world of pain right now.’ Oscar can flick his tail and look down on his nemesis both physically and metaphorically and both can then be happy that dog and cat honour has been satisfied.

Throughout it all, Mabel doesn’t quite get it and skips out behind Olive, carrying a favourite toy, suspecting that she’s supposed to be cross but happy just to be taking part.

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