Christmas Ignored Pets

Posted by dodo

There came wise dogs from the East bearing bones, and being wise they ate them.

Many English people won’t go away at Christmas because they can’t bear to abandon their animals. They hate the thought of putting the dogs in kennels, where they won’t get any turkey left-overs or a paper hat to wear at Christmas dinner, or leaving the cat in a cold house, with a neighbour coming in every day to top up the untouched Whiskas.

Other people have to work hard looking after farm animals. I remember one farmer’s wife telling me that she was going to have a lovely Christmas, because for the first time in thirty years of marriage they didn’t have cows to milk.

At midnight on Christmas Eve, holly is supposed to blossom and the cattle go down on their knees, with tears running down their furry faces — not only perhaps to honour the birth of Christ but because so many of their little calves are tied up in factory farms unable to kneel, or even turn round.

Pets like their owners, tend to behave very badly at Christmas: dogs cotton on to the leg-lifting potential of Christmas trees in the high street, and slaver to get their teeth into a new consignment of plastic stocking fillers and bedroom slippers. One year, my young niece made neat parcels of Go Cat for their three cats, and hung them on top of the tree. The whole tree crashed down twice before my sister-in-law discovered why the cats were rushing up to the top of it and tearing at the parcels.

Underwalked and bored, Maidstone, our English setter, was always running away during Christmas week. One Christmas day when he had done this and we were tearfully opening our presents, imagining him under a non-existent bus, we got a telephone call from a house in Roehampton, several miles away, saying that Maidstone had enjoyed a turkey dinner and eaten everything except the sprouts, and was now watching the Queen’s speech.

These days at Christmas dinner, when they’re not out on the razzle, our dogs wear bows, and have presents; chew sticky bones, or squeaky cutlets or buns, which they chew until the squeak falls out — a squeak-ectomy my husband calls it. One dog usually retreats upstairs in a sulk because of the crackers popping. The cats have catnip mice.

A teenage friend reports that her dog Dino sensibly fasts on Christmas Eve, even allowing the puppy to eat his dinner, because he realises that it’s Christmas, and there will be heaps of good things for him on the morrow.

On Boxing Day, when our dogs are so podgy from overeating that they have to jump sideways through stiles, the cats mount an assault on the turkey carcase. Putting an Ascot-hat meat-safe cover over it is quite useless because a claw fits neatly into one of the mesh holes, and can be hooked off. One year, we went to the trouble of weighting down our meat safe, but, frantic with greed, the senior cat gnawed her way through the mesh.

As little children grabbing nuts and sweets always leave the larder door open, my nephew last year had the bright idea of rigging up a rope tied to the mud weight from a boat, so that the door closed very slowly even when left wide open. The cats soon worked this out, and spent Boxing Day playing last one out is Chicken — or rather Turkey. The pantry is freezing and they don’t like being shut in, so often they mistimed their exit and got their tails caught.

A terrible bloody-mindedness overcomes cats when they are deprived of turkey. This Christmas one of ours could be seen halfway up the bird-table stand, furiously shaking the bread off the platform above, while her kitten hovered in the bushes below in case an unwary robin darted down to pick up a crumb. Other occupations included crash-landing on furniture among the Christmas cards.

Kennel guests, brought to stay at Christmas, are seldom very popular: Granny’s Peke, who yaps and has dirty unclipped paws which spread mud all over the newly scrubbed kitchen floor; big dogs that lift their legs on the curtains, trail the wires of standard lamps like goose grass, sweep tea cups off small tables with wagging tails, and even worse chase sheep.

Nor does everyone coming to stay like the incumbent house animals. Barking dogs are very bad for Grandpapa’s nerves and Granny always gets goosed by the Labrador. My husband’s cousin remembers an ancient family cat who had a semi-permanent adherence on her backside of hair or worse, known as Pussy’s bum-crumb.

`One Christmas morning,’ she wrote, ‘we appeared at breakfast to find Granny in a state of shock. She had left her hand-bag open on the kitchen table, and during the night, Pussy had somehow bitten off or removed her bum-crumb, which lay neatly across the middle of the bag.’

A friend remembers staying one Christmas with an aunt in Sussex who had a ghastly Jack Russell called Hengist who `chewed up all our newly acquired gloves, rogered our new tights, and alternatively clawed or bit us. There wasn’t much we could do in retaliation except give him the occasional surreptitious kick. One of my eighteen-year-old cousins who hated him most of all, however, vowed to get him and, finally, as we were leaving, he grabbed Hengist and shoved him in the fridge. Hengist survived to rot up further Christmases, but it was at least half an hour before his muffled frozen yaps were heard. Naturally, there were terrible accusations, and a great deal of bitterness, but we admired our cousin tremendously and never gave him away.’

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