On Becoming Lunch

My flatmate, the one on the left with the long, floppy ears, is in the doghouse, so to speak. And he can count himself lucky just to be locked in his cage. In fact he's pretty lucky not to be in the pot, as the patience of the chap who feeds us is wearing a bit thin.

What he did this time was get behind the washing machine (filthy place, even I don't go there, but he was bored) and chew a rubber pipe. Well, he'll chew anything that offers a bit of resistance, and it looked like good chewing. So there he is chewing away on this pipe, quite happily (he doesn't learn, you know- once he starts gnawing too much there's always trouble of some kind) and suddenly he gets a jet of water in the face. And it didn't stop. So there he was, stuck in the kitchen with wet feet, the water rising around him, a strong sense that it was all his fault. Oh and the couple of bipeds who we keep around to bring us food and clean the place up a bit were away on holiday, so it was up to the woman downstairs to sound the alarm when she noticed it was raining in her living room.

When the bipeds turned up the next day they weren't happy at all. One more of these and my long-eared colleague will be lunch, and possibly slippers. He doesn't understand that there's more to this business of being a pet than pretending to like having your ears scratched. It's a bit more nuanced than licking hands and standing humorously on your hind legs. One of the things humans really don't like is having their cage eaten, and a pet has to know these things.