Luci's diary: the irruption. With Toffee's view too

Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow! This is so exciting! There’s this huge dog living in my new home! She’s black and she’s called Luci and she’s so big she can get up on the sofa on her own. I can’t do that. I can get down, if the humans aren’t watching – they don’t like it when I do – and I don’t so much get down as splat, but at least at the end I’m on the floor. Luci just jumps on and jumps off when she wants.

I mean, she’s as big as a cat. I know that because I’ve seen a cat now. That’s something else we have in this house. A whole cat. All of our own. Well, at least we used to. He seems to have vanished. But Luci says he’ll come back. She says he’s sulking, but I don’t know what that is. And she says he’s sulking because of me, but I don’t understand how he can be doing anything because of me. He’s ginormous. As big as Luci. Probably bigger.

Anyway, it’s all terribly exciting. And I’m having a great time. And everybody thinks it’s great I’m here.

Well, you’ll have guessed that wasn’t me talking. That was Toffee. The new puppy. She saw me doing my diary and said, “What’s that? What’s that? What’s that?” and when I’d told her, of course she wanted one too. But she can’t write – she’s only a little puppy – so I had to write it for her.

She’s only a puppy. Yes. You read that right. Like I said the other day, we – that’s Misty and me – started to get worried about maybe another puppy showing up. And how she has. She has, she has, and she's Toffee. And it looks like she’s here to stay.

Toffee's moved in. And is using my sofa

Turns out she’s a menace. I mean, making me write her diary wasn’t even the most infuriating thing she’s done. She may be smaller than a squirrel, but she gets anywhere. And once she’s got there, she does just what she wants.

For instance, she pushes me away from my food bowl. She goes burrowing in head first with never so much as a by-your-leave and helps herself. It got so bad that I left her my bowl and went and ate the food from hers. I thought that was quite smart but later I heard the humans saying they’d put my portion in her bowl and my portion in hers. That made me feel a bit silly. Still, at least I finished emptying her bowl – my portion – before she’d finished emptying my bowl – her portion – so I reckon I came out on top in the end.

Also she has to sleep in a cage downstairs and I get to sleep on the bed with the humans. So I’m definitely the top dog. As I tell her when she pushes me away from my food bowl.

The sad thing is that Misty’s gone away. I mean, not really completely away. I saw him last night in the garden and we compared notes.

Emergency meeting with Misty at night
To talk about the terrible thing happening

“They do this, the domestics,” he told me, “they bring some ghastly yapping little dog into the house without even consulting me. You’re living perfectly comfortably and then suddenly you’re being crowded out by puppies.”

“Well, to be fair, there’s only one.”

“Believe you me, one puppy can be a crowd. I know. I’ve been through this before.”

“What? With me? But we get on all right, don’t we?”

“Well, yes, but you’re different. And I’ve got you trained. But this one – I could tell at once – she’s untrainable. I’m making myself scarce.”

“But… but… Misty, you’re not really going away, I mean completely away?”

“Yep. This is it. They can’t keep doing this to me. I’ve had it. I’m off.”

“But… you’re here now, aren’t you?”

“Now? Well, of course. I haven’t had my dinner yet.”

“So… you’re only going to disappear between meals, then?”

He looked at me like he couldn’t expect me to understand.

“Naturally. What do you think? Chap’s got to eat. But I’m not hanging around with that ghastly little nuisance in there.”

Funny thing is, I’m not sure he’s right. I think maybe she can be trained. See, a couple of times she’s got me to come down off the sofa and chase around with her. She comes racing across the room towards me, those silly little paws making little clacky noises on the floor, and when I jump over her and head back for the sofa, she comes racing back. And then when I jump off next to her, she leaps up and down and tries to lick my nose.

And you know what’s odd? It’s quite fun.

Wouldn’t that be the worst thing of all? That ghastly little ball of fur moves in and starts pushing me around and eating my food. And I end up liking her.

Oh no. That can’t happen, can it? It would be too awful for words.