Its A Dog Eat Dog World

I almost didn’t write this because I don’t want to be one of those people that whacks off about their pets, but we now have a dog.

Now I’m not really a dog person. For a long time the only thing remotely ‘dog’ that I was ever interested in was doggy style, but that pretty much dried up when I got married so it was inevitable I guess that we would eventually get a dog.

Okay so I’ve always like the look of some dogs but then I feel the same about Asian schoolgirls; it doesn’t necessarily mean I want to own one. Some dogs, I admit, are quite smart and quite cute but I have always felt that essentially, your average dog is a dumb animal as it relies on man to amuse it and thus lacks the individuality of a good cat.

We already have cats and the process of getting them went something a little like this: cat one was cute and cuddly for a bit, highly amusing then annoying and by default, boring, so we got another. Once she’d gone through that same evolution process it was time for a dog, or so the missus reckoned.

It probably should be noted that this was flawed logic from the start as both Mrs ClubDes and Junior are allergic to cats. Yet we have two.

At this point I played the Daddy card and said no. Contrary to the grandiose plans of her indoors, our house is not huge nor is our yard and as there was no way in hell I would allow us to get a small dog (the cats of the dog world), we sure as heck weren’t getting an animal that was 90% muscle sinew, 10% dog called Satan.

But then we met Charlie.

Who was actually called Freddie whilst at the SPCA but who calls a dog Freddie, seriously? He was neither mop nor Clydesdale in size, rather somewhere in between and although he was dead scared of me initially – an impression I try to cultivate in everyone I meet for the first time – he was rather handsome and the other two vote holders in the house adored him, so what else was I to do but cave.

So now we have a dog (and have had for a few months now). Someone at the SPCA must’ve seen us coming because he is for the most part, a nutter, so he fits in perfectly in our little corner of suburbia. Oh and sure we’ve had all the wonderful things they never tell you about before you get a dog; the whizzing on the bed, the cacking everywhere, the chewing of everything and the occasional social erection but who hasn’t done those things whilst out on the piss aye?

The twice a day walkies rule that I laid down as being a pre-requisite for getting him fell by the wayside after a couple of weeks, as did the ‘not on the furniture’ rule that Mrs ClubDes decreed. But then we all know rules are meant to be broken, that’s why the wife and I no longer use the safety word…

There is a downside to all this and that is now I am a dog owner I get a lot of dog talk from other owners and requests for doggy dates etc. These are people I remove from Facebook immediately because my feelings on dogs have only changed ever so slightly; I love ours but I have no intention of hanging out with yours.

Or your Asian schoolgirl for that matter.

Charlie, the exhibitionist.

Cats & Tats

I know I’ve said it once but I’m going to say it again; my cat is awesome.

Now I don’t want you to think that I’m one of those spinster types that keep photos of their pets on their desk and as screensavers and yes, I know pets and kids are never quite as good looking in reality as you’d like to think they are, but mine is.

My only wish is that he was big enough for me to mount and ride him.

Imagine that Jermaine, me arriving at your place on my giant domestic cat. I would never need to tie him up because he’d only ever serve one master and we’d be able to communicate in much the same way that only Han Solo could understand Chewbacca.

He’d be like that bloody horse of the National Bank ads too and just appear when you least expected, watching, always watching. Like Aslan the lion only less Christian. At night I would ride him bareback through the fields, holding on only by handfuls of his white fur as his muscular legs propelled us through the long grass.

Later we would wash the excitement off by bathing together in the lake which is not at all odd because my cat really does dig water; he’ll often hop in the shower or dip his paws in a bath. See I told you, he’s awesome.

If I ever got round to having a tattoo I’d seriously contemplate having him on one arm and our other cat on the other. Not as in a gay Lassie portrait kind of way, but in a Chris Garver tiger sprawling up each arm way. That would be awesome. Tattoos are awesome. I wish I had one.

The reason I never got a tattoo for a long time is that I feared little things, like pain, and looking like a complete peen-arse because I’ve got skinny extremities and a kick arse tattoo definitely loses some, if not all, of its coolness when etched on the guns of a nine year old.

For a long time I was comfortable in telling myself that that was the reason but then it dawned on me that far skinnier, far weaker and far more tragic peeps than I have been tattooed and they look awesome.

Except the bogan at my school that lied about his age so that he could get a tat a full year before he was legally allowed to.

He went to one of those parlours where everyone who works there looks like they have Hepatitis and as you’ll find out a few months later, they did. His tat sucked and looked ridiculous on his skinny, pale arm, especially when he wore his sleeveless flannelette shirt on freezing cold days, just so he could show us all his ink stain. What a winner.

Tattoo wearing is very much in vogue these days. Everybody seems to have at least one and isn’t afraid to show them, as a mark of their individuality as much as it is art and I like that, I really do. If there’s one thing that excites me more than riding my cat bareback it’s a girl with a spectacularly cool sleeve, or two.

But there’s a small, nagging irony in this whole thing that I just can’t seem to get over; people get tattooed to express their individuality but yet consume the same products en masse that make them far from an individual i.e. cell phones, iProducts, clothes etc.

Once upon a time people got tattooed because it really did make them stand out, so much so that society shunned them. Now I can’t help but think people get tattooed because everyone else is. So now I have another reason as to why I won’t be getting one any time soon and I feel strangely contented with it.

P.S. Your new sleeve is awesome KB. Like the song, you are the only exception.

Me and my cat. Awesome.

I Prefer Cats

Why do the manufacturers of dog food seem to believe in making their product look more appealing to humans, not the dog?

This is an animal that will eat its own, or heaven forbid another’s, shit. I don’t think it’s going to be too concerned if its next meal doesn’t have thick, meaty chunks lathered in gravy surrounded by real vegetables.

But yet it must work because dog owners up and down the country are fooled into buying processed horse made to look like the stew Mum used to make.

This is just one of the reasons why I prefer cats.

The missus and I love our cats this much...