There are mornings when I walk into the kitchen to find two dogs, a cat and a tortoise all looking up at me, and think: how did I let this happen?
But mostly I’m used to it, to the eight staring, expectant eyes, and to the extra level of chaos a second dog brings to proceedings. I crunch my way across the room in bare feet, stepping on the remains of whatever items the new dog has recently chewed to fragments: plastic flower pots brought in from the garden, a quantity of unravelled rush matting, some cardboard that may well have been part of this morning’s mail.
The new dog is currently engaged with its favourite toy of the moment: a large and jagged chunk of concrete rubble unearthed from a garden bed, which we all politely refer to as “your rock”. By “engaged with” I mean that the dog is gingerly grasping the concrete in its jaws, lifting it high and letting it drop to the floor with a thud. I make coffee and sit with my feet on the chair opposite, so the tortoise cannot sneak up and bite my toes.
The cat climbs on to the table and walks back and forth between me and my laptop, pausing only to bash its forehead into mine.
“I’m reading this,” I say.
“Miaow,” says the cat.
“No,” I say. The cat is never going to let me forget that eight weeks ago I accidentally fed it twice.
“Miaow,” the cat says.
“It’s out of the question,” I say. “You need to put it behind you.”
“Miaow,” says the cat. This carries on for 20 minutes, until my wife walks in and pushes the cat off the table.
“Christ, this room,” she says. “It looks like … I don’t know.”
“It looks like humans don’t live here any more,” I say. From where I’m sitting I can see that the new dog has chewed the point off the skirting board where the wall turns a corner by the door. This is a personal blow – I spent many hours sourcing that skirting so that it would match the rest of the room, even though it doesn’t quite.
“Miaow,” says the cat.
“Fine,” I say, standing up to feed it for a second time.
“You shouldn’t give in so easily,” my wife says.
“I haven’t given in easily,” I say. “I’ve put up huge resistance.”
“Anyway,” she says, pointing to the new dog. “I’m taking that one to the park to wear it out.” The new dog leaps up, tail wagging, concrete chunk still in its mouth.
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“No, you can’t bring your rock,” my wife says. “Leave it there.” The rock drops to the floor and the dog follows my wife out of the room.
The cat turns its nose up at the food I have set out, exiting through the cat flap. A few minutes later the old dog and the tortoise square off across the cat’s bowl: the dog takes a bite of cat food; the tortoise follows suit; the dog snaps at the tortoise; the tortoise retracts its head just in time. I watch several cycles of this – chomp, chomp, snap, retract – like a very slow piston engine in operation – until I remember that cat food costs money.
“Enough,” I say, lifting the bowl from under their chins.
I don’t actually realise how resigned I am to the current arrangement until people come round, and I have to explain it in person. Later that night the oldest one’s girlfriend arrives for supper ahead of the oldest one, who is held up at some work thing. We sit down in the living room separated by the new dog, which is buried headfirst between two sofa cushions, back legs sticking straight up in the air, like a cormorant suspended in mid-dive. An awkward silence ensues.
“What’s she doing?” asks the oldest one’s girlfriend.
“Well,” I say, “she likes excavating things from deep inside the sofa. Things which she has invariably put there herself.”
“What sort of things?” says the oldest one’s girlfriend. Between us, the two back legs twitch a little
“You don’t want to know,” I say. “Don’t look.”
I am not left with the sense that we’re making a terribly good impression. There is a sudden thrashing, after which the dog’s head appears. The dog looks at me, and then at the oldest one’s girlfriend, and then at me again.
“Where’s your rock?” I say. The dog leaps from the sofa and runs into the other room, leaving us sitting on a pile of unnameable things. In the silence that follows I can hear the heavy thunk of concrete hitting the kitchen floor.
“It’s not even a real rock,” I say.
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