Pinky Discovers how to Melt a Teenager's Heart.

Mexican Standoff with Teenagers

Something weird and bizarre is taking place in this household. Yesterday when I was sitting on my bed, laptop open and typing a post, eighteen year old Padraic flopped down on the bed and chatted to me pleasantly for about half an hour whilst playing with the new puppy. 

This remarkable occurrence would normally only eventuate if one; he was attempting to fleece me of my hard earned cash or two, he was in some sort of dire trouble with his teachers, the motor vehicle registry office or the law. 

Immediately after Padraic left who should unceremoniously meander in to the bedroom and lay on the bed beside me but sixteen year old Lulu. Again, unless she is trying to persuade me into allowing her curfew to be extended or asking if five of her friends can sleepover on Saturday night I don’t usually warrant an audience with Princess Lulu. 

Stranger still, yesterday, out of the blue Hagar’s normally reticent girlfriend Meggles nonchalantly sat down with Scotto, me and the puppy for a twenty minute chinwag. 

 Ten minutes ago twenty-three year old Thaddeus unexpectedly rang and asked if he could pop over for a visit and dinner.

Could this precipitous display of teenage sociability possibly be the result of the arrival of our new family member? Could it be the baby Chihuahua Pablo cracking open the hardened exteriors of their teenage hearts and allowing the gooey centres to seep out for a change?

It must be said that all of my kids have been perpetual animal lovers. Padraic and Lulu went through an exasperating stage at about nine and ten years of age when they became passionately fixated on dogs. 

Every afternoon they zealously leashed the German Shepherd Borat, and Silky Terrier Willy, and dragged them off to the dog park no matter how inclement the weather might have been. 
What am I complaining about? I hear you ask. 

Well it may have been a good thing apart from the fact that both dogs caught kennel cough and hacked all night like three pack-a-day smokers for several weeks.

Eventually the other dog owners suggested to the kids that they stop coming to the park as feisty little Willy kept starting brawls with the other mutts. Instead they took the dogs for walks along the river and would inevitably return from these forays with an extra furry friend in tow. I never discovered whether Padraic and Lulu were deliberately enticing the dogs out of their yards or if they really were strays. The amount of times Scotto and I had to haul a large hound into our car and drive out to the dog pound ceased to be funny after number four.

They quickly transferred their doggy mania on to other preoccupations but our new puppy Pablo is clearly a current attraction. 

Honestly; gazing down at the tiny creature snuggled beside me as type this post, I could easily imagine that Pablo could singularly inspire world peace. 

The rat-sized pup is napping on his back, exposing his fat hairless belly. His little tongue is protruding in and out as he dreams of last week when he was still suckling on his mummy. 
I’m in love!

Celine and Pablo

Pinky's Gone Mental!

Introducing a guest writer: Celine (Miniature Fox Terrier)

Poor Pinky has really lost it this time. I put it down to ‘Empty Nest Syndrome’. The first to fly the coop was Thaddeus. He’s the one who smokes and comes home at three o'clock in the morning singing opera at the top of his voice. Then that little sh#t Jonah (the one I don’t like because he torments me) went off to attend University in the Big Smoke. Then we have Hagar and Padraic who operate like a couple of Tom cats and are never home even though they allegedly live here. And finally Lulu, the pre-occupied teenage girl who doesn’t even acknowledge Pinky unless she needs money or a lift somewhere.

When I arrived on the scene there were already two dogs, a cat and a parrot in residence. Pinky was clearly desperately seeking love and affection since her thankless offspring had absconded so abruptly. 

 Then I entered the picture and all of Pinky’s redundant affection was projected on to moi.

The question begs to be asked; why wasn’t I enough for her?

Foolishly, Pinky and Scotto went out on a Saturday morning to hire a video and came back with another bloody dog! Dog is probably a contradiction in terms; rodent would be closer to the mark. It’s an ugly little bulgy-headed, pop-eyed Chihuahua they've named ‘Pablo’.

I’m mightily p#ssed off, but as I apparently have to learn to live with the little mongrel I’ve resolved to take him under my wing and have thus compiled some sage advice for the Mexican midget.

Learn to beg my little Gringo. If you want treats learn to balance on your hind legs, spin around three times and add little extra traits like tilting your head to the side endearingly. It sucks Pinky in every time.

Don’t trust the cat. It will let you sniff its bum and act all unconcerned, then suddenly swipe you with its claws and sink its fangs into your neck. Believe me, I’ve been there.

Learn to jump, Burrito. The three teenagers who occasionally grace us with their presence are a prolific source of fast food snacks. By jumping on to the dining room table via a chair you can always find unfinished McDonald’s burgers and assorted crumbs they’ve neglected to throw away. 

According to Pinky they “don’t know how to wipe down a f#*ing table”.

Know your place my tiny Enchilada. Pinky lets me sleep in her bed and if you try to come between us during the night I will bite you on your chico ass. The same goes if you even so much as look at any of my thirty-four toys.

My final piece of advice Taquito is this; when Christmas time comes and Pinky tries to dress you up in a ridiculous Santa costume, run for the hills my little Amigo! Run for the hills! 

Knocked Up

About six months later I was in the front room teaching a drama lesson to a group of students.All of a sudden one of the little girls who had finished her lesson and was waiting to be picked up by her mother came tearing in.
“Mrs. W! You need to come quickly! There’s something wrong with your cat! I think it’s sick!”

Interrupting my lesson I ran outside to investigate the state of affairs. The cat was undeniably acting in a very abnormal manner. Rolling around on its back and wailing in a horrible and uncharacteristic caterwaul it appeared to be having some sort of seizure. 

“Hey Kitty, what’s the matter?” I tried to calm the frenzied creature.

She leapt up and began to rub her stomach on the ground, waving her bottom and tail high in the air and yowling like an alpine yodeler. By this stage all of my students had come out and we stood helplessly watching her writhing in what seemed to be agonizing pain.

I was wondering about whether or not to put the cat in the car and make an emergency trip to the vet, when a mother arrived to pick up her daughter, got out of her car and came over.
“That cat is in season.” she confidently asserted.

Oh, I thought. She’s not in pain; she’s just behaving like a slut.

I returned to my studio with the highly amused students believing that I could deal with Pussy Galore later. After ten minutes another student barged in shouting,

“Mrs. W! Your cat is running down the street with three other cats chasing it!”

I have to say that my students got more than their money’s worth that day.

Nine weeks later the cat was lumbering around like a baby hippopotamus and ready to drop her bundle any day. My kids were overwrought with excitement and taking bets on exactly how many kittens she would have.

The cat appeared one morning loudly mewing for food. 

She was thin. 

After the ‘cannibal mice’ incident it crossed my mind that she may have eaten her babies.

Either that or she’d delivered them in the bush land opposite our house and had abandoned them to be devoured by snakes.

Hagar immediately coordinated a search party scouting out every inch of the yard. 

“Found them!” he screamed joyfully after about an hour of thorough exploration.

She had delivered her kittens behind overgrown shrubbery in our pool enclosure. One by one Hagar ferried a tiny parcel of fluff out to us. There were five altogether, one for each of the kids to name and cherish. 

For a little while at least. 

Hagar was the most enamoured of his furry friend naming it ‘Pubit’ (don’t ask) and vowing to teach it circus tricks when it grew up a bit.

Watching the five ravenous kittens greedily gnawing on her teats and constantly vying for her attention brought back some uncomfortable memories and I think I actually bonded with the cat that day.

Extracting loveable, six week old kittens from the tenacious clutches of my distraught, sobbing children and sending them off to good homes was no easy feat. 

I had her ‘fixed up’ at the vet after that. She had an operation to remove an abscess a few years later that cost me $600. If I added all the years of vaccinations, worming treatments and food and shelter on to that, I guess she wasn’t such a bargain cat after all.

The moral of the story is – Don’t count your kittens until they are hatched.

Not such an aristicat!

In January 2002 the kids and I moved into a house close to their primary school and the sporting complex, where they spent a large percentage of my time. 
I was newly divorced and about to begin studying full-time for a Bachelor of Education at the nearby university. 

We'd brought our maniacal and senseless Jack Russell, Odie, with us but had left the blind, geriatric Siamese and the malicious, bitey black cat at my ex-husband’s house. 

The reason for this was firstly, as a rule cats don’t generally like to move house and secondly, the kids would be seeing them every weekend anyway.

A drama studio was set up in a front room of the house where my students could continue their private lessons and assist me in financing and maintaining my wine- cask habit.

At the beginning of August I realized that Lulu’s sixth birthday was imminent and after some deliberation I decided to buy her a kitten. 

Not being a cat expert as such, I wasn’t aware of the fact that cats aren’t much into procreation during the month of July and there was currently a city wide kitten- drought.

Scrutinising the newspaper every day and ringing the animal refuge left me empty-handed and scratching my head as to how I was going to procure a furry ball of mischief in time for Lulu’s birthday. 
I was beginning to get desperate as the 'B' day was fast approaching.

One fortuitous day I moseyed into a pet shop and found a solitary tabby (who had clearly originated from a couple of extra horny parents) sitting in a cage.

A little boy about ten, was standing beside the cage gazing at it adoringly. 

“She’s really cute isn’t she?” he lisped earnestly.

“Yes it is cute,” I replied untruthfully.

It was skinny, a bit mangy and didn’t appear to be infused with personality. With its plain markings and gummy eyes I have to say it wasn’t the most appealing moggy I’d ever seen, but it was only twenty bucks. 

Bargain! 

Dithering uncertainly at the cage and wondering if it was skinny because it was indeed riddled with worms, I heard the little boy unobtrusively murmuring to the girl at the counter,

“So I’m going home to ask Mum and I’ll come back later.”

That was enough inducement for me. 

I waited until he took off on his bike, scurried up to the counter and slapped a twenty down.

The moral of this story is- A cat in a cage is worth two in a bush.

Ps: We still have this cat twelve years on and it has cost me a fortune.

Australian Tails

We’ve always been an animal loving family. At present we are in custody of three dogs, an aging cat and a rainbow lorikeet that swears. 

At one stage we had sea monkeys as well.

We are on a first name basis with the Complaints Officer at the animal control section of the council (Hi Shane!). 

This is largely due to our evil cat who gets much gratification from provocatively appearing behind the fence and sending Borat, the German Shepherd into a frenzy of uncontrolled barking. 

Mind you he also barks at other cats, people walking past, Mynah birds, leaves blowing in the wind and … nothing at all.

When Lulu and Padraic were about nine and ten respectively, they suddenly decided that their lives would not be complete without the presence of mice.

After the previous macabre and chilling blood fest concerning the mice from “Silence of the Lambs” I refused pointblank. 

They begged, they bargained and there were tears and tantrums but I ignored their entreaties and stood resolute and firm.

And so they did what all children of divorced parents do when they don’t get their way; they asked their father. 

When I got wind of the depressing fact that Padraic and Lulu were both the delighted guardians of a couple of mice I immediately read the riot act. Under no circumstances were these mice allowed on my premises. Their inexperienced father had fallen for their diabolical con job and I was having no part of it.

“But Mum,” came the predictable petitions about three days later, “We stay here all week and only go to Dad’s on the weekend. Who will look after the mice when we’re not there and Dad goes away?”

And so the unrelenting, foul-smelling journeys between their father’s house and mine began. 
Lulu and Padraic sitting in the back of my car with the mouse cage on their laps, spilling woodshavings everywhere and permeating my car with the pungent smell of mouse testosterone.

It wasn’t long before two mice turned into five, five mice turned into twelve and so forth. We ran out of friends we could sweet- talk into adoption and the situation mushroomed out of control quicker than you could say ratatouille.

To make matters worse, Padraic and Lulu were rapidly losing interest in their once beloved pets and guess which village idiot was cleaning the cage and feeding the smelly vermin?

It was agreed after a family conference that the mice could be returned to a pet shop.

In all honesty, Scotto and I rang at least... gosh, two pet shops and not one of them was interested in taking the mice.

Like thieves in the night we drove the unwitting family of rodents to a picnic area at a beachside suburb. 

It was ‘mouse paradise’ complete with an overflowing rubbish bin and lots of mousey hidey holes.

After showing them how to build a campfire, equipping them with rudimentary building skills and then ensuring our cloak and dagger efforts had not been witnessed by anyone, we tearfully waved goodbye forever to the tiny creatures and 
scarpered back to the car.
As we drove away I idly noticed a very large hawk hovering in the sky above.

Stuart Little - The Dark Years

I recall when I was a little girl getting up early one morning and finding a squirming mouse in a trap my mother had set in the kitchen the night before. 
Because of the compassionate child that I was, I took it out to the garden and emancipated the unfortunate wretch. 

When I told my mother about my kindly deed she hit the roof.

This affinity to small creatures may have been what inspired me to buy pet mice for Thaddeus and Jonah when they were about nine and seven. Either that or five bucks a mouse seemed like a very cheap distraction.

The boys adored the tiny furry little critters and apart from a near tragic incident when Lulu inadvertently stood on one, they provided hours of happy entertainment. (After she stood on it I presumed it was dead, wrapped it in a tissue and concealed it in the bin. About an hour later I heard rustling and realized the mouse, just like Lazarus, had risen from the dead.) 

Roughly about three weeks after the mice had taken up residence I noticed that one of them looked a bit pudgy. Very pudgy actually. 

 I know what you’re thinking and no, it couldn’t be pregnant because I had it on good authority (the girl at the pet shop, who looked very honest), that they were both cute little girl mice.

The next day or so, inspecting the cage I noted that the fat mouse was now mysteriously skinny again. She looked a bit strange too, sort of wet and sweaty. 

This curious phenomenon occurred repeatedly about every three weeks over the next six months.

Visiting the pet shop one day searching for a magic product to prevent the mouse cage from stinking so much, I casually asked the girl on the counter what she thought might be wrong with the poor little mouse.

“You’ve got a buck and a doe together I’d say.” she nodded sagely.

What’s she talking about? I thought. What the hell are bucks and a does? 

“What’s actually happening,” she continued knowledgeably, “is that the female is getting pregnant to the buck, and when she gives birth the buck is eating the babies… are you alright? You look a bit pale.”

I drove home feeling nauseous and disgusted. I strode into the laundry and full of steely resolve took the grisly mouse cage into the garden and released Hannibal Lector and his sick, sick girlfriend into the wild.

Pinky and the Runaway Mutt

As an adjunct to an overabundance of progeny, several pets were introduced into the pandemonium in those early years. On reflection this was almost bordering on cruelty as I certainly had no time to look after animals properly.


Bruce, the West Highland Terrier and Bert the mongrel were around when Thaddeus was born. Bruce was perpetually infested with fleas, no matter how many pest killing baths he endured. He used to slink into the house unobserved and go to sleep underneath Hagar’s cot where there must have been a cool breeze.


Predictably, the entire house and my then husband’s hairy lower legs, became overrun with the parasites and had to be sprayed several times (the house not the legs). Bruce was a very cantankerous, irritable dog and I'm not sure if it was due to his unsightly and no doubt itchy eczema or the cortisone injections he had to tolerate on a monthly basis to get rid of it.


Eventually he ran away and despite advertising in the newspaper and scouring the dog pound every day, we never found him.






Bert, on the other hand was as wily and conniving as a Machiavellian villain. That serial escapee had me driving all over the city retrieving him from assorted well-meaning members of the public who had found him wandering the streets. No barrier proved too much of a challenge for Bert.


I swear his bloodline was part terrier and part kangaroo. We couldn’t figure out how he was managing his Houdini exploits until one day I witnessed him mid-act. He was literally climbing the fence in an anomalous fashion with the trained expertise of an SAS soldier.











One day he disappeared and there was no phone call alerting me to his whereabouts. We fruitlessly rang the pound who repeatedly insisted they hadn’t seen him. About two months later I was sitting with a coffee on my verandah and who should mosey past our gate but Bert, looking in fine fettle indeed.


On closer inspection, by the look of his collar and tags, it came to light that he had a new owner. And on contacting the owner, from where do you imagine he had been acquired? The dog pound of course.











For reasons I will never fathom (it may have been the pleading of the children) we settled financial scores with the new owner and took repossession of Bert.


Sadly he continued to decamp at every opportunity and we were forced to give him away to a good home with an allegedly impenetrable barricade surrounding the house.


About three months later we were driving along one of the city’s thoroughfares and spotted Bert galloping along the road with a broken rope trailing behind him. My then husband looked at me with a distressed, yet defiant expression.



We kept driving.