WE didn't get a dog day

We Didn’t Get a Dog Day ©

By Michael Casey

Veronica sent me a message tonight so I thought I’d try out this joke on her to see if she’s on my wavelength. 13^th Jan, in 2 days’ time it’s a year since my big Op. I had told my nagging daughters they could have a dog if I died and a cat if I had a heart attack, so Fate being Tempted I had a totally unplanned Quadruple heart bypass. So I was talking to my daughter, my small daughter and I said should we celebrate my first anniversary, and I called it We Didn’t Get a Dog Day. She thought for a moment and said we should call it Two in One, as Totoro our cat behaves like a dog.

Totoro will fetch a piece of scrunched up Aldi till receipt if you throw it, she will dribble better than Rooney all over our living room carpet. She also will come running to the sound of roast chicken being removed from plastic wrapping paper. Totoro will also SIT on command, and stand up on 2 legs like a Meerkat while she decides what she wants from you.

Totoro will sit on the piano like a candelabra, waiting for my daughters to start and play. When they are not here she’ll just free run all over the piano and up the sofa and launch herself onto the bookcase. Luckily she hasn’t broken my cheap hifi yet. The piano is kept closed at all times otherwise she would have broken it by now.

Totoro’s other hobby is sitting in the front room window watching the world go by. That’s when she has finished jumping up and tearing the net curtains. She also likes tunnelling too, just like that Mexican drugs baron in the dirt vest, only in her case its going under the throw cover for the chair in the window, then she falls asleep. The throw is a good blanket after all.

Speaking of sleeping, Totoro is a house cat now, ever since I let her out and she came back with fleas, it was decided by the management, my 3 girls that is, that she would not be let outside. Instead she has the full run of the entire house, if you leave the stairs unguarded she’ll race upstairs and disappear for hours, or until she hears the sound of a chicken wrapper being opened.  

Totoro will sleep on a bed, or under a bed, or under the duvet, or on a cupboard, or if she can prize a door open she’ll sleep in a wardrobe. She just likes sleeping, anywhere. Her favourite place is in fact under my bed as it’s the warmest place in the house thanks to the way our central heating works, it is South facing too, so first she’ll sunbathe then she go under the bed for 40 winks, or 400 in her case.

In exchange for this lifestyle she has to help my big daughter with her homework. This means she gets stoked while my daughter learns all her science, which is a lot as my daughter wants to be a doctor. So my daughter will be Dr Casey Totoro, it has a miaow to it don’t you think?

Well Veronica I’ve mentioned you name twice and we’ve only just met, so I’ll throw in the towel now, I have to take some pain killers, as Arthur has come out to play now.

Cheerio, and thank God they didn’t get a dog.