Chapter 11

Dexter: I chew therefore I am

A new ball. So brilliant. Brillianter than brilliant. Better than food. Well, depending on the food, of course. Not better than toast. Or buttered toast. One of the custodians, the male one, has been trying to palm me off on margarine and worse, rice cakes, which remind me of the time I tried to eat through  a packet of abandoned polystyrene tiles. They apparently were once used to make houses warmer, because you could set them on fire really easily. 

Somebody had dumped a truckload of the things on Prestwick beach. They looked delicious. But then, in those days, as a wild and crazy stray puppy, everything looked delicious. Course, they weren’t buttered, the polytstyrene tiles. Or even margarined.

Anyway, food hasn’t been too bad over the past few weeks. Obviously, you must have toast in the morning. The Fat Swiss Sofabitch is usually so comatose she has to have a piece of toast thrust between her jaws before she realises she’s meant to eat it, or in her case, inhale it. We’re back on the sheepdog fuel, which is OK, as it sets up a lithe handsome muscle machine like myself for a  day of ball chasing. And as I said, a new ball arrived.

This was called a Supermuncher, and it made a fantastic noise, a kind of chink, as though a distant church bell was tolling for the doom of all cats. Only in your mouth. The male custodian unwrapped it, threw it, and five minutes later I had it dismantled, the plastic and metal innards tasted...well. Not like church bells. Though frankly I’m not sure what church bells are supposed to taste like. I’ve eaten pew cushions, obviously. Well, I say, obviously. It was at a pet thanksgiving service my previous owner attended. One of those ministers who thought it would a good idea to have a special  event for pets and their owners. I think he was fed up with people saying they’d rather walk their dogs than talk to God. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it clear that he meant just dogs, and so some people, just one or two, brought along cats. A smattering of cats. And you can imagine what happened. A greyhound called Feargal started it. One minute we were howling along to a hymn, I think it was All creatures Who on Earth Do Dwell, next there was a disembowelled puss being delivered to the altar. Quickly followed by its bowels, in the mouth of Gladys the Afghan Hound. She always had a taste for offal. I never knew the cat’s name. Do cats have names? Who cares, really?

Anyway, all hell broke loose in church after that. Collars slipped, leads lost. Cats screeching, owners having heart attacks. I myself detected an interesting aroma from the balcony, which is how I came to try eating a pew cushion. Tasted like chicken. Religious chicken! Very old religious chicken. Superb!

The inside of this new ball didn’t taste of chicken. It tasted of rubber, basically. And when the owner saw what I was doing, he went berserk. Grabbed the ball, started taking photographs of it, shouting about how he’d been told it was indestructible, could be chewed for eternity. how he was going to complain, get his money back. Then he started rummaging about in my mouth. 

Now, I’ve swallowed all sorts of things in my time. Chunks of wood, half a golf ball, bits of a television remote control. All excellent in their own way, and all eventually passed through my truly brilliant digestive system. sometimes speedily. I pride myself on my digestive speed. But as it happens, I’d swallowed nothing from this church bell ball internals, which the owner eventually found under the sofabitch, who had lain on them without noticing.

What no human seems to understand is that no ball is indestructible. Everything can be chewed by a Staffordshire Collie cross to absolute and utter destruction, sometimes involving digestion. Or indigestion. And not just balls. The whole world. And that is brilliant.