The pets concur: a full house is a joyful house

Luci, our black toy poodle, was telling me the other day how much she and the other two pets liked having the house full of people over this weekend.

‘Six humans! It’s great. We can never miss out on a lap. If one’s not available, there’s always another we can occupy. And the walks! When there’s family around, friends come too, and they want to go out. Usually to the best places.’

It’s true that we took her and Toffee, the orange toy poodle, to one of their favourite places, which is also one of ours, Ashridge Forest. It’s wonderful any time of year, but particularly comfortable now in a real summer, though it was good to have a breeze blowing to take the edge off the heat during our walk.

Toffee and Luci leading the way through Ashridge

‘And one of the humans is sleeping in our favourite place – the couch,' Luci continued. 'What could be better than to sleep next to a human, except to sleep next to a human in our favourite place?’

A human to sleep next to on our favourite couch?
Very heaven

She and Toffee certainly took advantage of that opportunity. But Toffee just made a point of sleeping where the family was anyway, couch or no couch. They both spend the night on our bed, and in the morning Toffee and I have a ritual: I get up and start to go downstairs, and she follows, a couple of steps behind. In the kitchen I just get time to turn the coffee machine on before her expectant look gets too much for me and I find myself serving up her breakfast of dog biscuits.

But with the house full, the rite has changed. We got down to first floor where one of my sons had made the mistake – perhaps because of the heat – of leaving his bedroom door open. The notion of going down to the kitchen was driven right out of her head. Well, to be fair, she doesn’t like the biscuits that much anyway, and the open door was obviously a far greater temptation.

She shot in.

‘No, no,’ Toffee, I heard, ‘just lie down and keep quiet.’

Toffee likes licking faces. Unfortunately, not all owners of faces like to have Toffee licking them.

‘Down girl. Have a rest. I want to sleep.’

She must have done what she was told because it was a while before she came to sample the bowlful of biscuits I’d served up for her.

‘Even Misty likes it, you know,’ Luci assured me.

In the days when a basket was a snug resting place

Misty’s our cat, and no diminutive figure in our family. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s nearly twice Toffee’s weight. There was a time when he used to find a small shopping basket a wonderfully snug place for a siesta. These days, no basket would accommodate him, unless it was specifically designed to carry pineapples. Or possibly water melons.

‘He loves having all these people to stroke him,’ Luci went on.

‘Yes, he does seem to prefer their stroking to mine,’ I sadly replied.

‘Well,’ she said, rather more sternly, ‘they concentrate. They focus on him. When you stroke Misty, you always seem at least half distracted by the TV news or a book you’re reading.’

I have to confess that’s true, and I have the scratches on my hand to prove it.

‘As well as the better stroking, the other thing is that the guests have small suitcases and they leave them open. Now that shopping baskets are, well, just a bit too tight, a suitcase is, you know, a much better fit…’

A visitor's open suitcase
As if specifically designed as a siesta place

That’s true too. It seems the full house is a recipe for satisfaction for Misty as well.

All round, really. We’re all happy with the visit. Win-win-win: human residents, pets and visitors, everyone has enjoyed the bustle and the company.