Another from the roasting tray.
I killed the missus' cat.
For clangers this 1's a 2fer & only one of them mine.
A little background - the missus and I had 4 cats, Blush the eldest (& as it turned out deafest) who even preceeded me, Molly - the flufftiest of the bunch, Jonesy, my fat,greedy white bastard & Clovis - the baby (whom I was conned into keeping). My missus & I had noted Blushes increased lack of hearing but thought little of it due to his age - 16-17.
'Twas a few years back. One Sat. arvo I was about to nip out to the shops to acquire stuff for the fambily evening meal. As I backed my old Landcruiser out of the carport (strangely not letting it idle after starting as I usually do - fuck me I've turned into my grandad!) I heard the most awful gurggly scream. I stopped the car.
Unfortunately right on top of Blush. I yelled for the missus and jumped back into the car to get the wheels off the poor moggy. She came out & screamed then ran back inside. He dragged his mangled body off into the backyard. I got her to get me some towels and the catbox. I eventually caught him, gingerly wrapped him and then proceeded to not drive at a leisurely pace to the local vets.
I walked into the vets and stated as calmly as I could that "This is an emergency, I've just run over my cat".
The young, bored-looking, gothy, receptionist girl gets me to fill out the paperwork, yadayada. Blush mewling loudly and painfully all the while.
She then tells the bloke waiting with his puppy to get it's shots that he can go thru. He turns to me & says that I can go in his place as my case is an emergency. I thanked him profusely. She stops me, insists that he goes in and says -
"Booked appointments take precedence over walk-ins."
I tried to explain that it was an emergency, my cat was dying, most walk-ins would be emergencies and even the concept of triage. Nada.
Eventually I saw the vet - I asked them to relieve his pain but I didn't want to make the call so I went to get the missus (the 1 thing I really regret - I hope they managed to knock him out enough that he was high as a kite and not in pain). The missus and I held him as they put him to sleep - it was very plainly apparent that there wasn't much anyone could do.
As we walked out with the vet trying to console us, the tactful receptionist asked my loudly wailing missus
- "& how will you be paying for that today?" I should point out that I was definitely the calmer of the two of us.
I honestly think it was the fact that my missus was so distraught that saved little gothy girl.
Later that week I went to square up. I was chatting to whom I guess was the regular receptionist as I paid and I mentioned the young lady and her complete lack of tact. I even went as far as to suggest that there must be some nepotism involved as I couldn't see that girl getting a service based position anytime soon.
The vet then stuck her head around the corner and informed me that she felt that her daughter was a model employee.
Length apologies? How about the 10 min. I had to sit there with my cat dying slowly in great pain because I hadn't booked an appt. in a nearly empty vet surgery on a Saturday afternoon.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Sat 2 Feb 2013, 0:39, 1 reply)

So many pets
so many funny memories.

Ratity the rat, he loved being lord of the living room and terrifying the dog and the cats (he was 3 feet long nose to tail tip).
He loved his sip of tea which with the amount of caffeine in it to his small body would send him on a 20 minute frenzied run around the edge of the room.
He also liked to nibble wires. One day he went behind the telly so I reached around the back for him. Squelch! "Oh my god I've squashed him."
Lifted my hand and looked at my finger. He'd done a huge turd and I'd impaled it. Nice. He promptly wandered out from the side and went into his music center cupboard house.
I'm sure he looked at me and wondered "Why are you playing with my shit?"
(Captain Spacker I lick windows, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 22:08, 1 reply)

DNA?
The recent Tesco horse-burger bullshit reminded me of this...

A few years back I spent some time on a French farm. Great days. Apart from the work - I was assigned full-time to the dairy, a huge, industrial-sized factory that pumped out over 10m litres of milk a year.

Anyway, the dairy duties weren't that bad, the worst thing was the hours. The cows needed milking at all times, and it was many a 3am that I found myself rigging up the machines, often with only the 60yr old dairy manager for company. The system was so automated that the two of us could rinse 1000's of gallons by ourselves.

He was a strange man the dairy manager. He lived onsite, literally behind the cowshed and had dedicated his entire life to the dairy. To keep the things fresh, cows were inseminated regularly, as new calves were required to replace the oldies when their milk turned sour or something. Trouble was, half of the newborns were males and therefore no use to a dairy farm. These poor calves were housed and fed for a short period before being sent of the local abattoir, where they were slaughtered and ground up for all sorts meat-based products.

But before they were sent on their fateful journey, the old dairy manager would bottle-feed them and chat with them for a while. One night he asked me to try something, he asked me to try putting my fingers into a newborn calves-mouth. So I did. The toothless baby-cow took my fingers and sucked and sucked and sucked, it's surprisingly smooth tongue rolling around my digits. Unsure what to make of this, I removed my fingers and looked questionably at the old man.

'C'est bon, eh?' He asked.

'Er, I guess so.' I said.

Then, without flinching, he pulled down his kecks, pulled out his rather greasy looking cock and balls and popped his todger in the calf's mouth. He stood there, arms behind his head, hummed a little tune and quickly came to a shuddering climax as the little cowlet sucked him dry.

Grinning, he ambled off to feed the others, all the time looking back at me. 'C'est naturel!' he'd shout over his shoulder, 'Essayer!'

I caught him in the act a few more times before I made my excuses and begged to work in the bottling plant. I'm sure he's still at it. I'm sure a lot of them are. So I was wondering recently, that if examined closely, will the meat from those calves show traces of human DNA?

Cos I'm pretty damn sure the local slaughterhouse packaged 'Prime French Beef' for Waitrose and the like...
( Albert Marshmallow is a completely irredeemable cunt, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 21:48, 15 replies)

Ratsicle
I used to have pet rats, as pets go, neither rubbish or excellent really but I did love the smelly little critters so just chucking them in the bin when they died wasnt ever an option.
One died in the middle of summer, at that point the garden was being dug over and a patio and raised bed being laid down so there was only one tiny bit of soil, no more than 8 inches deep suitable for burying it.
Until the following day when something had dug it up and decided it wasnt worth eating.
I reburied it and again it was dug up, so under cover of darkeness I hid it under a dead bush in next doors garden until i could bury it in a day or so when the raised bed was finished.
The following morning i looked out and saw that my neighbour had decided at that point to cut the bush down and was scooping it all up to put on a bonfire. So i had to go out and rescue it once again.
I put it in a bag and tied it to the back of my bench.
Where it stayed for another 3 very hot days until the bed was finished.
At that point when i opened the bag, I heaved and just poured the semi liquified remains in a hastily scooped hole.
The second died in winter when the ground was frozen solid and i couldnt bury it.
So i put it into a bucket and placed a tray on top of it.
It was about a week before I managed to get a hole dug.
Uncovered the bucket to find it had filled with water, a twig had fallen into it and the whole lot had frozen.
A neighbour came out to find me holding a giant popsicle with a deat rat in the middle and me giggling a bit maniacally.
I have their skulls now sitting on a shelf with lots of other animal skulls ive collected.

tl:dr
pets died and suffered an Ignominious burial
(insomniac-surfer oh go on then, just this once, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 21:32, 8 replies)

Autistic cat
My cat, Rasputin as I have named him for all the difference it makes to his ridiculous existence, is stupid. Many cats are stupid, but he is very, very stupid. Any normal cat, you throw some ham on the floor and it is devoured. Rasputin usually misses where it's been thrown and ends up searching wildly about two inches away from it.

Yesterday I thought I would get some wooden cat litter, because it keeps the smell in and something pretend about the environment. Rasputin, giant Aspie that he is, has enough trouble with the litter tray anyway. He tries to pull everything in a two foot radius into the tray both before and after use. And sometimes when he doesn't even want to use it but he's got the urge for some hand-flapping.

Given the drastic change in his routine that was some slightly different litter, perhaps I should have expected it. Last night after my first successful attempt at a relatively early night in a long time, I was awoken at 4am by the furry little Rain Man twat scratching frantically at everything near the litter tray. In honesty it upsets me a bit when he goes all spastic, he got run over some years back and despite his good physical recovery he has never quite recovered mentally.

So partly feeling sympathetic for his useless state of mind, and partly irate at being woken up by him being a retard, I tried to show how the litter was used by scratching at it a bit. No luck, so I decided he should go outside and find a place to go like a normal cat. Five minutes later I realised he had come back in through my housemate's window and woken her up, because she was opening her door to let him into the house.

He came back in, twatted about some more and finally decided that having a poo was appropriate, thank fuck.

And then he shagged some supermodels and did donuts in his Accord, thus keeping me awake until dawn.
(Eukanuba, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 21:15, 5 replies)

Story from a friend
His wife bought a strawberry scented collar for his new kitten. He has a mate who's allergic.
The mate picked up the kitten in the middle of an argument: does it REALLY smell like strawberries? You got conned, mate! And takes a massive great sniiiiiiff of the kitten.
There's a pause.
The kitten dangles from the man's hands.
A thoughtful expression crosses the man's face.
And...
"AAAAAAAAAAAAA---"
"--- CHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!"
The kitten is caught right in the blast. Ears blown back by the expulsion of this six foot human, fur dragging in the wind, it claws and flails at the air to fight back.
"---CHHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!"
"---MRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW!"
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 21:08, Reply)

I have a pet snake
I've posted about her before- she's not the brightest spark, and will do things like tie herself into knots and then panic, or "hide" by burying her head and thinking she's safe, not realising that the other two feet of her is sticking out in the open...

Anyway, a few weeks ago I was holding her while reading, and she crawled under my hair. This isn't too unusual- I have very long hair, so it's warm, and dark, which is pretty much snake heaven (much like how she treats any warm beverage, sleeves, and unguarded cleavage.) This time, however, I sneezed. Sudden noises make snakes panic! So she instinctively curled up into a ball. This meant that she had woven herself into my hair and then effectively "knotted" herself in.

I tried pulling her out gently, but she was pretty freaked so she just clung even tighter. Then I tried leaving her to crawl out on her own, but at that point I think she realised she was 'safe' and had dozed off. By now I'm panicking- there's a snake stuck in my hair, and she has been known to sleep for days!

At this point the phone rang (the snake twitched irritably at the noise), and my friend asked me if I was going to the pub. I declined with the frantic babble: "I might be late! I have a snake stuck in my hair!" I whispered it as softly as possible, and hung up.

In the end, after 40 minutes, I managed to coax her out with a defrosted mouse.
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 21:03, 8 replies)

Kamikaze Hamster
One night, we had a band from Scotland staying at our house as they were playing a local gig. They camped out on our living room floor, and in the morning, the drummer asked if we had a cat, as he felt something furry on his face. We didn't, so this confused us, and we laughed and pointed at him for being weird.

We had a hamster that was in one of those fishtank cages on top of a wardrobe in the back room. It gnawed at the little slots for putting water bottles in and such, and it seems it had managed, without us noticing, to gnaw around the latch to the door, gradually, until it finally sprung free. It must have leaped FROM THE WARDROBE, then darted all over the band's faces before disappearing down the back of the fireplace.

We never saw it again, but it helpfully came out while we slept and left shits on the sofa.
(V3lvetPresley, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 20:21, 1 reply)

When my first son was about three,
my ex-wife bought a kitten, despite me a) hating cats, and b) being highly allergic to cats. (partly hence ex, etc...)

Walking downstairs one morning, we heard giggling from the front room where CJ (son) was playing. Entering the room, we saw CJ had the kitten held up by it's neck, with his thumb pressed firmly in its windpipe. He was giggling, and the cat was struggling for breath.

We got rid shortly after, it was the perfect excuse to get rid of the little shit. The kitten, not my son. We kept my son.
(V3lvetPresley, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 20:17, 6 replies)

total pea-roast, but you might find this amusing
This is probably a good place to tell you about my amazing snake.

About 5 years ago a friend was getting rid of his corn snake. As I've always wanted a snake I asked for him, and Huzzah! I became the happy keeper of a beautiful corn snake. He had a small scar from when My friend had lost him and found him with the hoover, but was lovely looking and having been brought up in a house with very small children was very tolerant.

A year or so later, we had to move house, and couldn't find a new one before we had to move out of the old one, so we went to stay with some people we knew,and put most of our stuff in storage. Three days after we got there, we returned to their house to discover smoke pouring out from under the floorboards in the living room. After wandering about for a bit trying to work out what was going on, we open the hall door to go upstairs and met with a wall of smoke. yup, their bloody house was on fire. We later found out the floor had collapsed over where we were wandering around shortly after we got out. Hurrah for not dying!

Among our clothes and other replaceable essentials, my snake was upstairs in his tank in our bedroom. the fire was upstairs. Arse. Not much I could do about it though.

After a few hours of worrying that the fire was our fault (it wasn't - woo!) and watching the firemen go in and out, the fire was vanquished. One of the firemen (in full kit) was nearly killed by the backdraft when he opened the door into our friends bedroom where the fire had been caused by a dodgy electrical socket sparking. The heat had been so intense it melted all her jewellery and stuff. My snake was in the next room. Again, arse.

Then a nice firelady asked whose the snake was. Sadly, I said he was mine, expecting to be shown a blackened crispy dead thing. She said she didn't really understand why, but he was OK. He was a bit brown and sticky (like a stick!) from the smoke, but he was otherwise fine. Still, 4 (8 now - this is an ooold pearoast) years on, when he sheds his skin (more often than he used to) there's always a brown smudge along the top of it. For a couple of days afterwards he was quite sluggish, so my guess is that he slowed down his breathing or some other reptilian trickery. I dunno.

2 years later he escaped. He had been prowling around his tank looking for a mate, refusing to eat anything for a few months, when he managed to prise the lid open and get out. The front door happened to be open, and he was gone by the time we realised. Arse!

A whole year later, I was coming in from the garden, when there he was! My wife came running because I bellowed 'SHIT!" so loudly she thought I was hurt. When she saw me with Rusty around my neck she was speechless. I should probably mention here that we live in the North Cornish countryside, in England. He'd survived a whole year, including a fairly harsh British winter. There were feathers in his poo, so he'd definately been hunting, etc. There had been an unconfirmed sighting of a corn snake over a mile away from us while he was gone. I like to think that was him. Now after another escape scare (kids left tank lid off, he got out but was under my daughters bed) he's curled up in his tank in my office.

So huzzah for my amazing cornsnake - he's survived fire, the English countryside, vacuum cleaners and small children.

Length? about 5ft now!
(teasus likes tea, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 20:14, Reply)

GERBILS
We nagged my Mum for ages, and she finally bought us two male gerbils. We had a little house in their cage, and all was well.

Until one of them fell pregnant.

It gave birth to a litter of seven, crammed them all into the tiny house, crushed them to death, and then ate them.

That was nice.
(V3lvetPresley, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 20:14, 2 replies)

Bluey and Joey
When I lived in Brierfield (near Burnley), we lived in the posh end, and there was a bloke on the street I lived on who bred budgies. We got a budgie from him, and called it 'Joey'. Joey was ace, but he had a weird predilection for climbing around his cage. After a while, his beak snapped off from using it for purchase on the bars, so we took him to the breeder, who put it back in with it's Mother while his beak grew back, but he got far too attached, so we were offered another. Lo, we got 'Bluey'.

Bluey was fucking mental.

He would hang upside down on his perch, then flap around his cage. Once, my Mum couldn't be arsed to pull the cage apart to clean it, so she vacuumed the floor of the cage. Of course, Bluey swooped down and his wing went straight up the vacuum hose. She screamed at my sister and I to turn it off, but we were in fits of laughter. Eventually we did, and Bluey was shaken, but unharmed.

A couple of weeks later, he did his perch spinning routine, and plummeted straight down from the perch, braining himself and killing himself instantly.

I often wondered if it was suicide.
(V3lvetPresley, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 20:11, 8 replies)

R.I.P. Henry 4evr in r hartz.
All we found of you was a bit of fluff and a tiny hamster sized kidney on the living room floor. The cat looked happy, though.

I had a mate who had a blind dog. He used to stand behind trees and call him. He only felt guilty after said dog died.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 19:45, 1 reply)

I am one of those mad cat ladies.
Got two lovely kitties who are my surrogate babies. One is a black cat; the other a big black and white fluff ball.

The black cat won't let me sit on the left hand side of the sofa in peace. She will sit on the floor next to me and stare for literally hours if I do.

The big fluff ball cat likes to give me a daily massage. On my boob. Always the left boob. With claws extended. It's awkward.

Cats are weird, but I love em :)
(The Curse of Millhaven. Pretty little mouth underneath all the foaming, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 19:31, 1 reply)

I have many stories.
I'll start at the beginning.

When I lived in Newham, before I moved 'oop north' when I was about four or so, we had a Jack Russell (I think) called Pepper. He shat everywhere. Sadly, this was around the time my sister was born, and when she learned to crawl, she would pick up his poos. So, he had to go. Backing onto our house was a large place where David Attenborough would hold garden parties. Not sure whether it was his gaff or not. But a bloke there that my Mum and Dad got talking to was a vet, and he took Pepper off our hands. We next saw him in the vet's pocket on Blue Peter, as he appeared on there in his professional capacity.
(V3lvetPresley, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 18:26, 4 replies)

I had a catdogbird that eatfetchedpuked a thing that most catdogbirds will quite regularly eatfetchpuke. Then it died and I had an emotion.

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 18:14, 5 replies)

My better halves now dead ex farm cat
Used to bring in all manner of stuff through his catflap - he'd scavenge through dustbins and binbags in much the same way that foxes do.

The half eaten pizza slice was dirty but amusing.

The dirty nappies and tampons were not.
(magictorch, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 16:58, 1 reply)

Bulbous
Around ten years ago I had a cat named TC (I didn't name him, his real name was Officer Dribble). At the time, I also had a lodger who was more of a dog person than a cat person... TC doted on him. One day TC decided that just jumping on the lodgers bed and purring at him wasn't enough and the best way to get in his good books was to bring him a bird.

My lodger went batshit - a god ten minute tirade followed as the lodger lectures the cat on how endangered birds are and how unhygienic avian carcasses are. TC slinked off, disappointed.

Later that afternoon, TC dashes back into the house and starts batting something about the room - diving after it in that way cats do when they've brought a live victim in to entertain you. The lodger was about to begin his lecture again when TC stops and drops his present in front of us... he'd dug up a tulip bulb from the garden across the road and was playing with that.

TC didn't openly hunt birds until he died around 5 years later. He stuck to rodents and never brought presents to the Lodger again.
( armaitus Sheep Casings!, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 16:42, 1 reply)

Fenton
etc
( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 15:31, 2 replies)

Dirty rabbit
When I was little we had a big black floppy-eared rabbit called Patrick, and in the summer we'd let it out on the lawn so that it could run around and go mental.

One day at the height of summer it exhibited some rather odd behaviour - after some furious running around in circles, it suddenly jerked its hind quarters mid-run and let loose some liquid which spluttered onto my flip-flops.

At the time I thought it was sweating, but rabbits don't sweat. I was baffled.

Many years later during, er, some adolescent discovery, it suddenly dawned on me that my rabbit had in fact spunked on me.
( rofl harris, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 15:06, 2 replies)

Dog's dinner
When I was 15 I was at my friends house for dinner. In full view through the window, we could see the family dog do a shit in the garden and then subsequently eat it.

The dog quickly ran back into the house and vomited up its own shit next to us onto the carpet whilst we were still eating.

The resulting vomity/shit stench was unlike anything I've had the misfortune of witnessing before or since.

I couldn't finish my dinner.
(l0bst3r, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 15:04, 7 replies)

My grandma's budgie
rather foolishly mistook a chip pan full of hot oil for a soothing bird bath.
(Haywood Manley, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 14:36, 4 replies)

Amish Cat
We had a cat, called Max, that we bought from the local Hutterian Brethren. They are a religious community near our village, somewhat akin to the Amish, although far less strict. They are great people who keep their religion to themselves, but do so much to help others.

Anyway, they had an open day, and we ended up buying a little kitten from them, and we called him Max. Max inherited the peace loving ways of his former home and was constantly walked all over by the local chav cats. His hunting skills were limited to worms. Yes, worms.

I came home from work one day to see Max sitting at one end of the windowsill of the lounge window. At the other end, sitting in similar tacky ornament fashion, was another random cat that Max had let come in through the cat flap.

"Oh great, Max, you useless bastard" I cursed as I unlocked and walked in through the front door, resolving to hoof the aforementioned interloper over the back hedge. I opened the doorway from the hall to the lounge, only to see an enormous smear of cat shit arcing away from me across our recently laid & very expensive beige carpet. Interloper had taken a dump right behind the door, so that when I opened it, I smeared the steaming pile across the carpet like a professional turd plasterer.

Deep rage ensues, hissing cat grabbed and hoofed over the back hedge at great altitude. I spend the next several hours retching over & scrubbing a big pile from our deep pile, and had to remove the door to scrub the underside of that too.

Max, just sat and watched the whole thing from his vantage point on the windowsill. I fucking hate cats.
(SausageWarrior destination Zululand, come on boys jump in the van, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 14:23, 1 reply)

My mum calls golden labradors 'golden lavatory doors'. Quite deliberately.
But she's never owned one and neither have I, so this story doesn't really belong here.
( 4Q just lurking, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 13:47, 6 replies)

I've copied and pasted this from Jessie's profile... I don't think she'd have minded
Obviously, it's a repost - from the "Accidental Animal Cruelty" question:

Oh, and it's a long'un. Suck it up, you love it.

My family are mostly animal lovers.
They have had dogs since I was about 8 and have had many an adventure, but a few instances of accidental cruelty stick in my mind.

* The time that their dopey doberman became interested in stones thrown into the sea. This was a fine game indeed, find a pebble, call her name, chuck it into the sea and watch her furiously try and sniff it out (spluttering if she timed dunking her snout underwater wrong) before spotting that you have another and instantly losing interest and running back to try and catch that one...only the game evolved, to ever bigger stones, and on this fateful day a large rock about the size of a hand was being thrown, and unfortunately the poor girl spotted it before she was supposed to, resulting in a doberman intercepting a large and heavy rock straight in the smacker.

She knocked out all of her front teeth, but that was only discovered when getting back to the car as she hadn't even flinched, just proudly jumped around her catch, seemingly oblivious to the fresh gap in her gums.
She was (of course) taken to the vets, but the teeth had been knocked pretty cleanly out so not much could be done really and she was absolutely fine, never seemed to bother the eejit :)

* My dog, not the smartest in the world, not the stupidest...but also has his Dope Award moments. We used to play the classic game of 'catch your tail', which he'd humour us with briefly then move on. Until the fateful day my mum decided to hold his tail for him, trying to eek a few more minutes of tail chasing out of him. He happily chased it around a bit, my mum moving with him, but then all of a sudden he had a burst of enthusiasm and leaping forward he grabbed for his tail.

That yelp made me feel like the shittest owner ever, and the hurt expression he gave us was heart breaking. He'd managed to dislocate his own damn tail and it was crooked for weeks :/

* My dog again. He's a very well behaved dog, though not rigidly trained, there's some debate about the level of training dogs need but I must admit that I'm quite happy with his, he knows his place and when you call him on something he knows when to stop fucking about and take you seriously, but he has a real mischievous streak and a whole lot of personality for a dog. One thing he learned pretty early on is that food isn't his until it's given to him, you can drop the tastiest thing ever in front of him and he'll just stare rigidly at it, occasionally glancing at you to find out its fate and only going for it if you tell him 'ok'. Though it was never tested too thoroughly with us out the room the boy knew not to steal food either so we were pretty much covered on all bases.
The accidental cruelty came one night when we were having a bit of a late snack, none of us being hungry enough for a full meal. we went through to the utility where the big fridge is and loaded our arms up with a few choice bits, cheese, tasty condiments/pickles, left over meats (you get the picture) and retired to the living room to consume them. The dog followed us in to check it out but soon left again, knowing that he wouldn't get ANYthing if he sat and watched, we all assumed he had retired to his basket to wait for any left overs we might be inclined to share...only he hadn't, not quite. Periodically he kept wandering in to the room and staring at us, kind of hopefully, noticing the looks of 'out!' and wandering out again, but he kept coming back! ever more desperate look in his eyes each time. The last few times I could hear quiet whimpers as he approached and left.
There was nothing noticably wrong with him, and eventually he retired to his basket and stayed there, not quite settled but at least not upset, and we locked him in the utility where he sleeps and all went to bed ourselves.

When I came down the next morning I was met at the door by a large, frantic and ecstatic canine! as I turned the corner with him bounding around me I finally found out why...there on the floor, underneath the fridge and not two feet from his basket, was a large chunk of ham. Untouched.

Remembering his doggy lessons he had resisted snatching that succulent treat, right from when it had been dropped unseen from our late feast, through the hours of us sat downstairs ignoring his pleas, right through the night as he tried to ignore its tempting aroma right by his nose.

Needless to say, serious praise was inflicted on him and the tortorous ham became his own private feast, fusses were aplenty that day :)
Since then we have become aware of his 'Lassie' actions and come to understand what it means when he comes to find us out with that hopeful look in his eyes and meaningful whimper, if you follow him he will show you exactly what he's asking for, and though he doesn't always get it it's certainly a useful communication for us.

/about 6 by 4" and honey-mustard glazed

UPDATE: Just last year, Jake - he of the crooked tail and ham-resisting skills, finally died. He'd been in poor health for a while, and in fact the last time Jess & I went to see him (he lived at her mum's), Jess cried in the car on the way home, as she thought it would be the last time she saw him. I still can't get my head around the fact that she was right; only it was her that died first.
When I say "in poor health", he wasn't suffering. Just old, and deaf. He'd still wander around, take great pleasure in eating anything he was given, and enjoyed a good scratch behind the ears, but he couldn't hear you if you called him from another room. Last year though, he suddenly took a turn for the worse and it was finally time. I'm not ashamed to admit I had a little cry; it was like another part of Jess had gone.
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 13:43, 6 replies)

I used to live at a pub, which my dad ran.
We got a cat, she was black; black, as the dead of night.

So we called her Snowy. The confused looks when we told people were a constant source of amusement.

One day she got inside the pool table. A few minutes later one of the regulars came in, put his money in and released the balls. As he reached into the receptacle at the end of the table to pick the balls up a black furry paw shot out, swatted him on the back of the hand and disappeared back inside the table. He screamed and nearly shit himself in fright; as the rest of the pub nearly shit themselves in laughter :)
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 13:34, 9 replies)

"If you think you're the most important man in the world
Try ordering another man's dog around."
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 12:33, 8 replies)

Wonder dogs
I've been lucky enough to have two of the best dogs ever.

Brandy was a border collie, who my parents had gotten a few years before I turned up. Very friendly, loyal and intelligent, and when I was born she took an instant liking to me. When my mother would go for walks with me Brandy would always be in tow, and would growl at every person who approached the pram. As an only child in the middle of rural Ireland I'd often go exploring with my canine chum. Even if I was gone for several hours this wouldn't be a cause for concern to mum, since as long as Brandy was gone as well she knew I was alright. Not sure if that's more parental neglect or unwavering trust but anyways. She once had a large litter which was given away to friends & neighbours, but we kept Kylie - sadly, she was poisoned by a local farmer when she was only about a year old.

The other amazing dog was Ranger. He was born to a Springer Spaniel mother and an Alsatian father, and was suitably weird looking - a bit like a tall Corgi. He was also born within two days of my sister, and she put him through the wringer - as a toddler she'd pull his tail, his lips, poke his eyes, nose, etc. but he'd never wince, flinch or even walk away. A very timid dog, or a borderline mongoloid - who knew? We were coming back from town one day when we noticed an injured kitten in a ditch; not sure how she'd ended up there but she was obviously involved in some kind of accident as she was badly mangled. The vet patched her up pretty well but she only had sight in one eye. Her favourite pastime was to sit on Ranger's back and claw him - often till fur was flying everywhere, but again he would barely react. My sister would try to treat the kitten in the same way as she had Ranger, and he wasn't particularly happy about this but rather than bark at her he'd just pick the kitten up by the scruff of her neck and walk to another room.

Well, this is my first qotw post and it's absolute rambling nonsense so I'll stop now. Feel free to ignore.
(KDeath, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 12:12, 1 reply)

Went to visit my sister and family last summer.
Stand-out exchange of the weekend:

"YeOW! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

"Oh baby what happened what happened what happened there there, there there ... "

"My pet wasp STUNG me!"
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 12:00, 1 reply)

Vom.
I had a black labrador. He enjoyed eating non-edible things. Such as ski gloves. Unfortunately this wasn't conducive to good health, and had to visit the V-E-T. There his is, ready to go under, and there it was, covered in chunder.

Still had to pay the bill.
(brutal stack Raided the beeves of Apollo on, Fri 1 Feb 2013, 11:52, 5 replies)