Animal Crackers.

Riding: The art of keeping a horse between you and the ground. ~Author Unknown

I don't do horses.

I tried them when I was younger & bounced better but the horse had a much better idea of what he was doing with me than I had about what I was doing with him.

What I want as a pet is one of these.

I'm told they make very good pets being far more trustworthy than a tiger, you just have to watch the dew claws when you're playing tag. Apparently any cuts are very prone to infection.

Dearest is not being encouraging. He says they'd cost too much to feed & Issi is psychotic enough already. I see his point about Issi. When mum visited Issi's nose twitched so fast I thought it would fall right off his face. You could practically hear him thinking, 'So this is where they go when they desert me. I can smell that other thing,' meaning Pixie. Mum was accepted though. Issi has been known to growl like a bull mastiff when he doesn't like someone & freeze them in their tracks. He terrified a visiting Pentecostalist by twining round his ankles purring like a coffee peculator while growling like the mastiff at the same time. The poor man didn't know if he was friend or foe, being loved or about to become dinner.

The thing with Iss is he's always had an overinflated sense of himself despite being the world's biggest woos. Months it took of gentle encouragement to get him to go outside. If I disappeared from his sight he lay down & cried ~ literally! Outside he had to go because I only keep kitty litter for emergencies when outside is not possible. When he began taking himself it was a moment for rejoicing. Worse than toilet training a toddler I'm telling you but as I told my son at the time he was removed from his mummy far too soon & he hasn't developed right.

When Issi first arrived we owned another cat ~ my part Siamese, Gyver, who was not impressed by this interloper at all. Iss, on the other hand, adored Gyver & wanted to be just like him when he grew up. Gyver had inherited the Siamese raucous ability to make himself heard over any amount of noise. Despite his best efforts & considerable size Iss has a squeak softer than a mouse's. After finding him crying softly at the door on more than one occasion we took to leaving the doors open while we knew he was outside.

We knew Iss wasn't very brave but we also thought he was pretty brainless & as we were having trouble with feral cats of an enormous size we took care to keep the cats in at night. This particular evening Gyver had already come in & was quietly grooming himself when there was a kerfuffle at the front door. Iss shot down the hall at a 100 miles an hour, hurtled round the corner & out the verandah door. Hot on his heels came the most enormous black cat I have ever seen. He screeched to a halt on finding people about but before he could gather his scattered wits Gyver reared up from beside the wall & soundly boxed his ears while Iss slunk back to watch with a smug smile of satisfaction.

And the motto of this story: When in doubt bring them home to mum.