Dear Country Cousins

At a playdate yesterday I had a conversation with a girlfriend about the yearly catch-up letters that some families send out with their Christmas cards. We touched particularly on those ostensibly from family pets. And no, I'm not going to tell you what was said or what my point of view is on them (like you can't work it out...).

Now, I live in basement flat, in the middle of London. Not being the type of person who likes to take a dog for a walk accompanied by it's poo in a bag (no, I save that for when Boy #2 needs a nappy change at an inconvenient moment), or indeed the sort of person who wants to arrive home after a trip out to the olfactory knowledge that my cat has poohed in the litter tray (again, that smell is a privilege reserved for my son), we don't have pets.

(Having just read that paragraph through it seems that poo looms large in my psyche. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that the name of this blog may also be a reflection of this. Should I be talking to someone, do you think?)

Anyway, I digress - as usual. We have no pets, so there is no letter.

But wait! Perhaps we do. What about The Mouse(s)? We give it/them a home. We provide a clean and relatively secure environment(discounting the poison, obviously). We even provide - goddammit - snacks, in the form of tree biscuits.

Here, then, is a circular letter from our mouse(s)...


Dear Country Cousins,

Hope all is well with you, and that the Kestrel family down the road still have conjunctivitis.

We are all fine here. Well, I say 'all fine'; Grandma asked me to find out if you have had sight of Uncle Petey recently? He was last seen popping out into the Sitting Room for a snack a couple of days ago, and hasn't come back yet. There are reports that he made the long journey across Main Road trapped by a newspaper and a bucket after failing to get out of the way of the People - he has slowed down a lot, he's been eating so much that he's not as quick as he used to be - and that they abandoned him there in the Garden to a cold and lonely end rather than kill him in sight of the Mini's, but I can't believe they would be that cruel. No, I'm simply hoping that he got tired of Grannie's moaning and squeaking about the congestion charge in the drain outside (those rats at the council really are the limit!), and headed off to you for a spot of R&R. If you see him, can you let us know?

Other than that, life is pretty good. The Mini's continue to leave us liberal food supplies under the Dining Room Table, and She Person is so busy chasing them around trying pointlessly to get them to tidy-up / put their shoes on / take a bath that it's pretty easy to sneak out for a quick meal when her back is turned. She has taken to leaving the Kitchen Door shut when she goes out, which is inconvenient, but since He Person takes no notice of directives like that, leaving doors open (and lights on - which is nice) every time he enters or leaves a room, we're not usually confined under The Kitchen Units for long...


He Person has been here a little more than usual recently, which can be inconvenient. We wouldn't mind - he's got such a heavy tread we can hear him coming for miles - but he's so often in the Kitchen restacking the dishwasher, fixing himself coffee, or raiding the Biscuit Tin (oh, for the chance to reach that Elysium!), that it interferes with our trips out to the Mini's Rooms searching for dropped crumbs and chocolates.

The Mini's are both growing (who knew People could get so big?), and showing an admirable disregard for keeping their food on the Dining Room Table, so we're all getting a little more portly than we should be. Luckily The People have installed a gym in the shape of a Christmas Tree for us to work out on, but I think any benefit for poor Uncle Petey was negated when She Person made those tree biscuits; he simply can't resist the smell of ginger. The number of times Grannie had to stand at the bottom of the Tree and threaten to make him sit and listen to that dreadful music from the mouse deterrent signals if he didn't 'come back down right now...!' Mind you, I think he quite likes that dreadful noise; he's been a bit odd ever since he volunteered to taste the funny-smelling stuff in the trays that appeared all over the kitchen floor one night. He wasn't half sick for the next couple of days - so the rest of us steered clear. It's still there, under the Kitchen Units. One of these days I'm going to go up to She Person and ask her when she's going to get round to moving it; it's downright dangerous, if you ask me. Someone could really get sick.

Anyway, must go. There's an interesting looking sealed box with a hole just the right size for me under the Dining Room table. It smells deliciously of tuna, so I want to take a look inside. Auntie Flo was going to investigate it earlier on, but I've not seen her in a while so she probably hasn't got round to it yet. Must have gone out...

Love to Nancy and the kids,

Your cousin,

Ro Dent.