The Language of Pets

By Ashley Lister

According to Bill Bryson in The Mother Tongue, the French language doesn’t allow a speaker to make the distinction between a house and a home. To me, this suggests an unthinkable paucity of language which is probably the fourth worst thing about being French. (The smell would be third. The food would be second. Being French would be first).

Last Friday, just prior to setting off for the September get-together of the Dead Good Poets, I was startled by a strange noise coming from the kitchen of our house.

We’re a family with four dogs and one cat, so we’re used to strange noises. And strange smells. And strange substances. But there was an urgency to this sound that had my wife running. She got to the kitchen before anyone else, threw her coffee on the floor and went straight into the process of rescuing Spike.

Spike is the patriarch of our doggie family. He’s the sire of four pups (two of whom still live with us). After siring the pups, he also acted like a very modern and hands-on father by helping to raise his offspring. He cleaned the pups after they’d done their puppy business. He slept near them to provide warmth. He acted as a genial and furry protector. If his nipples had worked I don’t doubt he would have fed them regularly and it would have been healthy and delicious.

He plays the piano. Not very well. It sounds like a dog walking on the keyboard. But it’s more frequent piano-playing than I currently manage. And it’s always played in Spike’s distinctive style.

Spike also dances. It’s not exactly moon-walking. It won’t win him a place on one of the Strictly… TV shows. It’s a skittering, claws-on-the-laminate-flooring, crab-like-dance that could be easily mistaken for some sort of palsy. But I have to concede it’s better dancing than I do.

However, before you start thinking he should be renamed Saint Spike, I need to point out that he’s also an accomplished thief. Spike was the one who worked out that he can open the dishwasher door and use it as a platform to gain access to the kitchen countertop. Spike is the one who will feign sleep so someone will leave him alone in a room with a biscuit, or a coffee cup, or a chocolate bar.

And when my wife arrived in the kitchen, Spike was dangling from the knob of a cupboard door, suspended by his collar. It didn’t take long to work out what had happened. Spike had been trying to steal an empty cardboard packet that had once contained frozen food. It had been left on the counter by the side of the oven. Spike had been jumping up to try and snatch the empty packet from the counter.

By a million-to-one-chance, on his descent I assume, his collar had snagged on the knob of a cupboard door. He was dangling by his neck. He was scrabbling to get himself down. And he was probably wishing he had opposable thumbs.

Luckily he was OK. Tracy lifted him down. Spike limped as though he had suffered a real injury for almost a full two minutes. And then he began staring wistfully at the empty frozen food packet, as though asphyxiation might be a price worth paying for the chance to gnaw on an empty cardboard box.

Because of this incident the dogs are now collarless – a state that makes all previously collared dogs look curiously naked. I don’t know why it should seem obscene. But it’s hard to deny that they seem wayward and uninhibited in this decadent state of undress.

It’s a bit like Yogi and Boo-Boo, walking through Jellystone National Park wearing hats, collars and ties, but no trousers. Somehow that seems normal. Yet, if Yogi and Boo-Boo took off their hats and ties, there would be complaints that the two cartoon bears had gone inappropriately Brokeback Mountain.

Spike’s autoerotic asphyxiation incident comes in the same week that one of our pets was diagnosed with feline diabetes. Mo, the cat, is now on daily insulin injections. The cost of these animals, spiritually, emotionally and financially, is excessive and unending. And, when people ask me why we bother, I shrug and say, “It’s so I can live in a home, not a house.”

I guess you have to understand the language to get that.