No. 1200: The winners
Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for an extract from an autobiography or diary of a domestic pet with an uncongenial owner.
Among the menagerie of unusual and long-suffering pets who wrote in were Gerontion's goat, Lord Rochester's monkey, Lesbia's half-smothered sparrow, Cleopatra's asp CI bit her bosom when it seemed required of me, knowing nothing of the political implications of my act'), the poet Christopher Smart's cat Jeoffry, irritated by being considered so closely, and a browned-off rattlesnake on a diet of marzipan mice. Only Long John Silver's parrot was missing. But the exotics did less well than the familiars: cats and dogs win the day, except for V. Ernest Cox's tormented bird, whose revelations win him, by courtesy of the Book of the Month Club, the two-volume Compact Oxford Dictionary (complete with magnifying glass!). He and the other winners printed below get £8 each, and an honourable mention goes to Joyce Johnson for a fine feline exit line: 'Tomorrow I go — to adopt some harmless, necessary man.'
He pointed to me. I knew I had drawn life's short banana when I heard him tell the assistant that as his goldfish kept dying he would try a parrot for a change. I panicked at the prospect of living in an aquarium — needlessly, for home was to be a down-market ex-budgerigar cage. Thus, standing on the perch required me to develop a stoop; standing on the floor caused foot trouble. (Claw analysis revealed erosion by sand of sensitive membranes.) In rare moments of tenderness he demonstrated his affection by poking me with a bread-knife, then running it across the bars. it was like being raped by a harp. And what parrot manual suggests that fitness and contentment are achieved through a diet of burnt toast and toffees? Ah, would that I had psittacosis, that I
(V. Ernest Cox) • Also, meine Damen and Herren, baste, In English, the todayish Thunderweather the End was! Punished she has me, attacked to have his Shavingbrushes. This can no wider go, and I saY you, Nimmermehr! The Noteating I begin before the next time she me calls her little Leberknoedel and me to dance makes for the Food. With my Spine, the Dancing — na, I you ask — and this Stomach scraping already the Floor! No Playthings moire? Good! The Kitschcurtains on this Basket will I with my Teeth apart tear, the same Teeth she show behind up-pulled Lips, with the Backhairs upstanding, and her I will make to bite. A Dachshund am I and remain! Seeing we whose Willtriumph (Susan H. Llewellyn) Here he comes — stroke, stroke, stroke and 11°I• even a dog biscuit. He's read in some rag that stroking is good for his health. His health, mind you. Nobody considers mine. He's always at it, stroking and fondling me with his scaly hands, and I think I've caught something nasty off Min. His hair has been faling out recently and now mine is too. Fishheads every day don't help either. I wouldn't mind so much if he didn't have television on all the time with commercial after commercial showing mouth-watering, chunky' jellified tinned meat that stands up by itself. Today he's been telling the next-door bitch how he's thinking of having me put down as I', n1 old, mangy and useless. He'd better watch out, tf that's the criterion, or they'll be coming round for him soon. Griffiths) Call me Ishmael. My owner does. Something t° do with my being a stray, hence outcast. I call him Mr Tibbs. He leaves the
central heating n 24 hours. In the Heat of the Night. Get it? The Whiskas sweats in the kitchen corner.
Mr Tibbs is an unconscious sadist. He traPPed my tail in the cat-flap, amputated it, part of his master-plan to be a surgeon when he finishes training. So I'm Manx. Has he got three legs? He hat%neohta. has women: a succession of novice nurses, bangled bombshells who twitch my ears, examine my undercarriage for evidence of sex, squeal when they find the fleas. The fleas come with WO Tibbs. They fling themselves from him like as flicked from an outsize cigarette. I find the fleas abhorrent. I abominate my feline condition.
It's a dog's life. (Belle R. Welling) 7 a.m. Door opened. Caught curled up in the Forbidden Chair and got flying slipper right bet- ween what Baudelaire called my beaux Yeli'v' miles de metal et d'agate. Sprang up, seeking sanctuary, but crash-landed in his hairy antis. Ugh! And me convent-educated! He perched rue atop the chandelier, set it rocking and croaked] 'Sailing .... I am sailing ... ,' his vile 111°u1 Stewart impression. All this because his vine walked out on him last week.
7.10 a.m. As he came from kitchen I fell to the floor. He grabbed me and cuffed me. '1-°°11, what you've done to that chandelier, you blunux vandal!' 7.30 a.m. Before going off he fetched tin of ate food and tin-opener and slammed them on tl:, table. 'Right, Clever Whiskers — do it yourself' I knew then it was going to be one of the bete,,
days. Come back, Mrs Hitler! haw) might give him something in return for all his kindnesses.
(Stanley St.
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