FAREWELL THEN RUPERT McCLOUD

A controversial character, a contrarian, a ceaseless conversationalist. A possessor of one green eye and one blue eye . . .but no ears. Author of a series of dense novels charting the lives of 18th century whalers off the coast of Nantucket that won him the accolade of being the Herman Meliville of the feline world. A prolific shedder of white fur. The reason why I ended up in a physical confrontation with a bus driver after he escaped his box in transit.

Farewell Rupert McCloud, my cat, who passed away peacefully at his coastal retreat this morning. You will be sorely missed. The following song is a tribute to Mr. McCloud, who actually provided the sax solo that kicks in around halfway through.

Goodbye mate.

THE DOGS OF WAR GO BOOOOM!

I bought a dog. It went a bit crazy and bit me, so I bought a second dog and trained it to protect me from the first dog. The second dog started terrorising my cat, but there wasn’t much I could do for her because if I punished the second dog he might have stopped protecting me from the first dog. Then I realised that what I needed was a third dog to protect the cat. This third dog protected the cat against the second dog but, in so doing, built up an alliance with the first dog, who also hated the second dog because he was protecting me. So, now the third dog took against both me and the second dog and was firmly allied to the first dog. I asked the cat to put in a good word for me with the third dog, as the only reason I got him was to protect her in the first place. She said she would, but only if I let her eat my budgie.

It was at this point that I appealed to NATO's North Atlantic Council for military intervention, and they fired an LGM-118A Peacekeeper missile at the lot of us. BOOOOM!