Three Dogs and an Ex-Cat and Me on a Classy Afternoon.

I miss my classical music. So, on a rainy day when a tropical disturbance startled city folks, first with red, then orange and on to yellow warning, I switched on Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony 9 as the house dwellers take their naps, including the three dogs outside.

The latest addition to the canine brood is happily named Bouncer. He is a Belgian breed whom we got when he was only about three months old, a pup. Now, he's a humongous beast, easily climbing on my back with his muddied paws.

The Messy Bouncer

He feasts on steamed chicken head dimsum, and sometimes even siopao. He eats veggies and potatoes and fruits, even wheat crackers. He carries his big basin food container between his teeth and wiggles it when he asks for his food. He overturns his green water pail container as soon as he's done drinking.

First, we named him Bugoy for lack of any other name. Then we switched to calling him Hunger because no amount of food satisfied his appetite. Since he was a growing glutton, I then thought of calling him Gluttonic.
Next was Vibber because I loaded my Iphone with the app vibber.

And finally after owning him for almost three months, he's now officially christened Bouncer. That's because he's the main guard, the point man, and he's fierce.

Bouncer used to be a meek puppy. He has several siblings who are now owned by different people. His original owner owns the Mum and Dad, and they freely roam at his backyard as watch dogs.

Bouncer was bound for at least several weeks and then was allowed to roam free. But he was a mess and made a mess of everything. Plants were uprooted, rubber slippers were gutted, upholstered seat at the back was munched, plastic basins and everything plastic were mauled.

We still let him loose because he is the main guard of the house. But we confined him to the backyard. And Shaddy, the front act who was leashed before is now also on the loose, and together with Yabbi, man the front part of the house.

Shaddy and Yabbi are not friends, though. They fight constantly, unlike Shaddy and Bouncer, who at one time had their respective chains connected to the same pole.

The charmer, Shaddy

Our cat, Savannah, meanwhile has been missing for several weeks now. The ugly, lovable, white cat we nurtured from frail infancy into a bulging whiner went missing one morning when she failed to show up at the dining door when I opened it.

For a while, we thought she'd just slipped out of the fence slot, but days without her mounting the hood of the car, and meowing for her breakfast, snack, lunch, snack and dinner confirmed our suspicion that she was indeed gone.

We suspect she had eloped with the cat who'd been hounding the neighbourhood, traipsing through the roof and onto the cement partition between ours and neighbour's houses.

A friend said, "she'll be back in three months and she'll be bloated because she's pregnant."

We miss Savannah. She, who got blue eyes and white fur. She whose left eye is somewhat damaged.

The cautious in me thought earlier that maybe Bouncer had something to do with Savannah's disappearance, and I kept looking around for cat remains in the backyard. It was a gross thought, and then I remembered how Savannah could jump from chair to chair to tree to fence, and how she could let out a piercing, ferocious yowl.

No, she's not missing; she's somewhere with her lover.