Arf!

I am a cat and a dog person. I don’t think I would ever say that I am solely a cat person just because I have three now. There was a time when I used to have dogs.

I miss Ferrous dearly. I met Ferrous in Singapore in 1999. He was about four years old then. On our first outing, we went to Bt Timah Hill and when he saw a little pool of water along the trail, he jumped in with the happiest look on his doggy face and sat in the cool water panting. That was the look that made my heart melt. Ferrous was named Ferrous Oxide because of the colour of his fur. His owner is a mining engineer you see. I think they find that kind of chemical thing amusing.

Ferrous:


Ferrous was a gentle giant. He was kind to humans especially small children. I remember once at the Botanic Gardens, a little girl walked up to him, put her small face to his big head, inhaled deeply and told him, “You smell nice!” Ferrous looked at her and gave her a tiny nudge with his head to acknowledge her compliment. She was chuffed. When I stayed up late to mark, he would lie stretched out at my feet to keep me company. Occasionally, I would lose all feeling in my feet because he was so darn heavy. He was always up for an adventure and loved it when I took him out for long runs at Bt Timah Hill – just the two of us – and he would do a mad gallop in front of me, sniff the air and wait for me to catch up huffing and puffing. My favourite thing to do was to flip his ears back so that he would look like Princess Leia. He hated it when I cleaned his teeth and ears and would race to the garden to roll in the grass after all that grooming.

We had Skunky in 2000. Out of the entire litter of puppies, he was the naughtiest. He was the one bullying all the other puppies – biting their ears and pushing them around. When he was a puppy, he had a long black stripe down his back hence the name. Skunky was a terrible puppy. He knew his fashion designers well. He chewed up my Gucci sunglasses and my Patrick Cox shoes, leaving the cheapo stuff alone. He also chewed up a portable keyboard for the palm pilot. When I came home, there were letters strewn all over the floor. It was chaotic Scrabble looking for all the letters to make sure he didn't eat any up.

The bad puppy with the cutest face:


When he is not chewing my stuff:


We had good times together – trawling the country for dog-friendly beaches and parks so that we could swim, run around or just to have a lie-down on the grass. Our craziest adventure was when we went to Bt Timah Hill at midnight because the dogs wanted a run. The humans had head lamps and the dogs had these fluorescent tubes about their collars. I was scared shitless because I had visions of them finding a dead body… It was pitch dark and all I could see were the fluorescent tubes happily bobbing about. They loved it!

The dogs moved to Perth at the end of 2002. The climate was much better for them and they had more space to run.

Ferrous died the year before last. I found out last year when I called and we both cried over the phone. Ferrous had a bloated stomach and died before he could reach the hospital.

Goodbye my baby.