Home, sweet home

This is my new mummy. When I got here, she made sure I had some water, food and a place to sleep.

She also made sure I was okay and watched over me 'till I was fast asleep.
I felt safe and loved. "I'm gonna be so happy here", I thought before I started dreaming of chasing pussy cats and play fighting.g.
I was not wrong.

My New Home in Seville

That's me below on my first day in my new human kennel that looked like a huge maze with many, many obstacles and strange, gigantic things. I couldn't pretend I was happy though: I missed my mum, my brothers and sisters; I was hungry, exhausted, hot.

Well, it had been such a stressful and confusing day. I'd been taken from my mother before I should have and along with all of my siblings sold by a conman at Plaza Alfalfa in Seville for an extortionate fee -we were just commodities to him, you see. All I could do was to hope that my new mum and dad were going to be nice to me.

I just wanted to have something to eat, drink and sleep like an angel. I was so so tired and confused....

So can I sleep now please? With my mum and brothers and sisters? Please? I'm so alone...

Three Known Ways to Travel

1. First there was mum's way. Grabbed by the scruff of the neck, lifted up and unceremoniously carted round. Undignified but effective. Oh, and a doggie instinct not to move whilst this was happening. Strange thing, instincts. (How was I to know that these instincts would cause my folks great embarrassment later in life!)
2. Secondly, being dropped into a huge cardboard box and separated from our mum and driven to market - most frightening, uncomfortable and not to be recommended.
3. Now this is more like it. Having been gently lifted out of the box by sweet smelling hands I am now travelling again. I am sitting in the palm of a man's hand (yes, I am this small!) and being held up in front of him, I am able to rest my weary self against his chest and watch the world go by! Wow, it's so big! I had no idea. Now I feel like a Princess, travelling in comfort and style - a girl could get used to this!!! I do wonder where we're going though...

Picture above: Me, about 6 weeks old

My First Memory

October 2003 and I'm terrified. I'm in a cardboard box with my 7 baby brothers and sisters.
It's been an hour since we were taken away from mum -she was very distressed too. What is happening to us? Where are we going? Why can't she come too?

It's so, so quiet - I cannot hear the others' crying as I can hear my own; maybe they are contented? Maybe they know what is happening but won't tell me? Nobody ever tells me anything!

I'm panting 'cause it's so hot. The sun is beating down on us in this confined space and there is no water to drink. I'm also hungry and I need to pee. God do I need to pee. I've been holding it for so long that my bladder is going to explode, but I don't think my siblings will appreciate it if I pee in here, as I certainly wouldn't if they did it.

I can't see, smell or hear mummy at all and this makes me feel even more frightened. I want to cry. I don't know where she is but at least I have my brothers and sisters to play with; not that anybody is in the mood for playing today.

Just why have we been dragged away from our mum so soon and why are we sitting in a cardboard box on the pavement in a hot day such as this with no food or water - I have no idea. All I know is that we are in a place called Plaza Alfalfa in Sevilla, Spain.

There's loads of alien smells around; I can't quite put my paw on it and this scares me too. To make matters worse every now and then a big, smelly and sweaty hand reaches in for me, messes up my fur, drags me around or picks me up in a very uncomfortable and clumsy way; damn my bladder is so full it hurts, next time this happens I swear I'll let i go!

Some hands are much much smaller than the average ones, I notice. These don't smell as bad but are clumsier, and I dread them. Later I'll learn that those hands belong to the offspring of the humans called children, and that they can be very nasty indeed.
However, if I could choose between big smelly hands and the small clumsy ones, well, the small ones are the lesser of two evils I guess, at least I can carry on breathing while they inspect me.
The smells that I smell on these people, I will learn later, are: cigarettes, cheap perfume and/or soap, body odour and alcohol. Yuck!

As I'm thinking all this, another pair of hands reach in for me and I make myself even smaller in fear. They too grab a hold of me but oh so gently and I feel myself relaxing all my muscles. And I mean all of them - so I pee. The hands get wet but they don't seem to care much and then they are soon dry again.

These hands are different - they're soft, they don't smell bad, and they are gentle and tender. It makes me think of mummy, so I curl up wanting to sleep. The hands take me to the face - where the eyes are - and two big brown eyes look at me. There's love and tenderness there. I feel so happy that for a moment I forget how hungry and hot I am.

Then before I can even get comfortable I'm back in the box again. I notice that one of us is missing; we are 7 now. I cry and cry but nobody hears me. I accept my fate and, exhausted, curl up against my sister to sleep. What else can I do?

In my dreams I feel those hands again. They hold and stroke me ever so gently, they put me against their body and I can feel its heat; they rock me from side to side. I want this dream to last forever, I don't want to wake up.

But I do, and I am no longer in the box. I look around me, and I am so petrified that I pee again. My brothers and sisters are gone, and I am all alone.