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Bonnie is an amiable, if boisterous King Charles spaniel, so we had no qualms about offering to look after her for the weekend while their owners took themselves off for a quickie second honeymoon.
Bonnie delighted in her new surroundings. Our plan was to introduce her to Dylan and Thomas gradually but she had her own ideas on forging new relationships. Before we could stop her, she went bounding down the garden with loud "Let's be friends" barks, and flushed Dylan and Thomas out of their favourite warm day snoozing spots. Thomas took to the Surrey hills -- a black streak determined to prove E=mc2 by converting all his mass into energy, every Joule devoted to velocity. But Dylan stood his ground and gave poor Bonnie an incredibly bloody nose. Gore everywhere, a bottle of TCP emptied, and a visit to the vet contemplated.
Sunday evening was warm and sunny. What a pleasure it was to be able to read the paper undisturbed, or to be able to put it down without finding it shredded a few minutes later. Dylan and Thomas eventually returned at their tea time (18:00 on the dot. I swear those cats have got built-in clocks) but instead of their usual barging into the kitchen and yowling their heads off until someone did something interesting with a tin opener, they were much more circumspect. They sidled into the house, checking every corner, testing the air, and taking high ground routes over kitchen cupboards and work tops to their feeding bowls. There came a point when they had to reach ground level. Whereupon Bonnie, who had taken over their bed, leapt out to greet them with joyful yips.
What followed is best forgotten, but the image of Dylan actually taking a short cut across the surface of our swimming pool will stick in my mind for many years.
Bonnie's somewhat jaded-looking owners returned to collect her this morning. Dylan and Thomas watched the ceremony of Bonnie being reunited with them and driven off -- from the roof of the house which had become their home since Friday. It's now noon and the slight falling off in insults whenever I go outside suggests they're considering venturing down. I have a feeling that their lost weekend is going to cost me a dead vole on my pillow at 4:00am for a week... Or maybe a month.
Editor's note:
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