Hazardous Journeys

On a nocturnal expedition to the loo, I hesitated at the top of the stairs.  The small landing was lit by the moonlight streaming through the skylight and I could see a dark blob on the cream carpet.  I peered groggily at it wondering if it was an up-chuck, or a down-drop.  Most likely the former, I decided as I bent down to examine the blob more closely.  When my eyes were about a foot away, I realised it was the pink elephant that Talulah had brought upstairs with her.  That’s fine, I thought, and continued down the stairs with my eyes closed.  Thirteen steps and a very sharp right and into the bathroom.  Suddenly my foot was attacked from below by something wet and hard.  I really should put lights on, I thought as my face crumpled into an expression of distaste crossed with annoyance and I toddled off to clean up.  The hard bit, in case you are wondering, was a bone fragment which the girls often keep in their stomachs for night-time entertainment.

In the way that dogs have their favourite wee stone/stick/wall/clump of grass/etc – why can they not have a designated sick place?  Why does my cream carpet (not MY choice – it was here when I moved in) have to have multiple stains?  Old Sisko used to give me plenty of warning of the re-emergence of food with long drawn out urghs.  Not this lot, though, they are stealth sickers, quietly leaving the bedroom and finding a previously unused bit of carpet to decorate.

Even if they would go into the kitchen where there is a cork floor, or the bathroom where there is vinyl – but no, it has to be carpet.  The cork floor is kept for an entirely different substance – drool.  The amount my dogs drool at meal times makes me wonder how they can manufacture such a huge amount.  Even the promise of a tiny titbit creates the equivalent of Niagara Falls.  Every morning they line up for their nut as I make my own breakfast.  They all have a nut which they crunch up carefully.  However, the time it takes me to open the nut tub, get my own handful and then pick out theirs, we are already ankle deep in drool.

And I know this.  So there is absolutely no excuse for what happened a few days ago.  I finished my breakfast and took my empty dish back to the kitchen.  I went down with the velocity of a bomber jet as I slid in the drool.  I banged my arm off the kitchen top as I went down, and with such a force that I wondered if I had broken something.  But no – just a bruise.  The dogs gathered round me mixed expressions and questions in their eyes.  Is she mad?  Is she hurt?  Is she being funny?  Does she want a lick?  I finally picked myself up and resolved to find a rug to cover the patch of floor which is regularly drooled on.