Cats and dogs: A tongue-in-poo look at our pets' habits

I love cats more than any other animal. They are to me the most mysterious, fascinating and wonderful creatures on earth. Not only can they read your mind, they can also manipulate it to  their own advantage.

That's the voice of 40 years of cat ownership speaking. Oh, and I didn't own any of my moggies - they owned me.

From Fluffy to Thatcher, from Geoffrey to Henry and from Lucky to Sooty, I was THEIR pet, not the reverse. If it didn't suit them to live in my home, they'd have been off like a flash to appoint some other purr soul as honorary daily food-and-milk supplier. (That's Geoffrey in the picture, by the way. His full name is Geoffrey Boycat - cricket fans may remember him!).

Some of us are cat people, some dog people and some, like me,  care for both. Only we usually have a preference and in my household cats have always held the edge.

To start with, they allow their owner more independence. If you're not around for a few days, it doesn't really matter as long as someone is there to feed them. Leave a dog on  its own for two days and you're not only in serious trouble with the animal authorities, the poor mutt will also have moped itself into a candidate for the canine nuthouse.

Then there is the cleanliness issue. Dogs love to pepper their noses with  the ghastliest of savouries left for them by their fellow barkers. The browner and smellier the better for Fido and his pals, and the worse for those of us whose shoes squelch the stink into our  rugs and carpets when we get home. From my experience, there's nothing more frustrating  than trying to house-train a  puppy. It will pee and poo to order providing you let it out a minimum of 250 times a day. But pop out yourself for five minutes and you open the door on your return to a mound of doggy dung and a floor awash with a ship-load of urine.

The yelps when Little Poo  is left momentarily on its own are bad enough. But they are nothing to the yelps of human anger that boom into the stratosphere when Mr and Mrs Owner discover what poochie was up to while they were out of the room.

Yet to a dog lover, those Close Encounters of the T*rd Kind are all acceptable in exchange for the pure, uncomplicated love you are guaranteed in return for just being there. Who cares that Fido spends all day rolling in mud, urine, vomit and the faeces of every animal on earth? It only takes a couple of hours to clean him up - and then those luscious licks and doggy hugs make it all worthwhile.

Unless, like me, you're already so browned off by those pooper bloopers that you've vowed never to have a dog again.

Cats are a complete contrast. House-trained before they've ever seen a house, all a kitten needs is a litter tray and it will wee and poo  into it ad infinitum. Mind you, removing the hail of stones that hurtle around the house in mini-puss's attempts to  bury the residue with its lethal back feet can take twice as long as clearing up after any untrained puppy.

Moggies also need no  teaching when it comes to cleaning themselves. And thereby hangs another tale - plus body, head and legs.  Before you  know it, puss has licked herself  bald and is coughing up a two-ton hair ball. You rush her to the vet thinking she's on her last legs but fear not...they all do it.

Unless, like my Molly, the furry one suffers from feline asthma and vomits up nothing but wheeze.

If your cat is a Tom, then you have another problem or three. First and worst is his territory spraying, and the pungent, difficult-to-remove smell it creates. Then there's his sexual appetite, which he'll inevitably impose on all the local moggettes - accompanied by a cat's chorus loud enough to drown out a 30-piece orchestra.

The solution to that one is simple. Have Tiger Tom snipped in the bud when he's a few months old and the spraying and s****ing will be a thing of the past.

If you have a dog, you will of course need to take it for walks. Unless you are a lazy bitch like one or two of my friends - and end up with a mutt that's even fatter than its owner. In such instances, at least fatso and her pet won't need a pooper scooper to clean up the dog mess, though not that many people seem to bother if the pavements in my locality at El Raso are anything to go by.

People not clearing up the mess left by their dogs in public places is a big problem everywhere. But here's a question for you: If you saw a threatening-looking yob's pit-bull pooing outside your home and he didn't clean up the mess (the yob, not the pitbull), what would you do?

If your answer is 'nothing', score a brownie point for honesty.

Cat-walking is strictly for models, of course. But at the end of the day, you'll shack up with the pet that suits YOU, whether it be a dog, cat, rabbit, kangaroo or a 15-foot crocodile. My 15-year-old grandson would happily have the lot - particularly if the croc came with a guarantee to eat his sister.

As for me, I'll stick with my two moggies back home in Guardamar. Even if I will be at my wits end hoping they are OK while I spend Christmas and the New Year with my family in Manchester. Don't worry, while I am away some good friends will be feeding them both - along with the neighbourhood's feral community who regard me as their meal ticket. 

They all used to be straggly. Now they are verging on obese - but at least none of them is pregnant. None of the males, that is.

If only they could speak English, I'd have shipped them all to the Isle of Manx. Now thereby hangs a tail...

PS. Question: What do you call a brown Spanish cat? Answer - a chocolate gato.

Am I spending too much on feeding my cats? Why aye, pet!

DO you ever wonder whether cats and dogs have the power of speech but keep shtum to avoid being put to work?

Food bills are a pet problem in Casa Donna, which is why I spend half my life lugging trolleyloads of animal grub around Mercadona.

I’m convinced my cats understand both Spanish and English as well as their own un-purr-nouncable language. Catatonic, I think it’s called.

The whiskered ones are also as foxy as Basil Brush. They know that the moment they utter a recognisible word, I’ll have them working as interpreters to help pay the mogg-age.

So they just eat, sleep and play while muggins seeks ways of claiming animal meals allowance.

Tom and Dick...don't ask me which is which!

It's not so much the cost of feeding my black beauties, Tom, Dick and Molly (Molly's the odd one out in every way). A menagerie of feral visitors have also adopted the cat flap in my scullery door as an access point to a never-ending supply of edible gold.

Molly is the one exception. She doesn't do cat flaps, queues or being nice to other creatures.

''Cat flaps hurt my head,'' is her lame excuse (she’s also got arthritis in her legs).

''That's surprising since there's nothing inside your head,'' is my answer. ''And you've just given away the fact you can talk. Here are the car keys - go and do the shopping.''

Some hope. Molly is as bad as the rest of them. Just wants to sleep all day, eat all night, and spend the in-between time cleaning herself. It makes me lick (sick as well) that while the cats laze about, I fork out at least 50 euros a week to keep them in the luxury they demand.

So I was staggered to discover a while back that my friends Mark and Judith Heyes were spending only HALF that amount on food for their TWENTY-TWO pets.

The Guardamar garage owner and his wife were at that time their La Marina finca with three dogs, six cats and three kittens, plus 10 exotic creatures including a Vietnamese pot-belly pig, a tarantula, two bearded dragons and a toad.

Mark Heyes with Roxy

And Judith insisted the total weekly bill to feed all of them came to just 25 euros. Clearly I’ve gone wrong somewhere, or my cat colony is even cleverer than I thought.

 Back in the Heyes finca, son Jack was keeping a supply of crickets padded up to bat against bearded dragons Dane and Athena. in a game the insects could not win.  Most were going in feet first and perish LBC (leg before cricket, that is.

Add to Lola's website Charlie the Vietnamese pot-belly pig, tortoises Fred and Wilma, terrapin Crusty and toad Todmandu, and they were hosting the embryo of a mini visitors' centre which could benefit animal charities as well as entertain inquisitive youngsters.

Mark and Judith discovered the animal within long before they moved from Tyneside to Spain in 2002. Back in South Shields, their pets included three Great Danes and a snake.

Mark owned a garage in South Shields for 15 years before relocating to Spain and establishing himself as a top mobile mechanic in this part of the Costa Blanca.

He set up the Performance & Diesel Centre in 2007At home in La Marina, it was already raining cats and dogs, not to mention pigs and toads, as the pet colony heaed for saturation point.

Says Judith: ''Having built up his reputation as a mobile mechanic. Mark decided he needed a base to work from, other than our garden!.

''So he found a large unit in Guardamar  which is now equipped with four vehicle lifts, latest diagnostic equipment, and everything you need to run a successful business.

‘It’s worked out very well for us. But you’re spending too much on your cat food, pet.’’

Bizarre but true: The night my psychic dog gambled with her life

I love both cats and dogs – with a marginal preference for moggies. And that’s because they have cleaner habits than poo-ches, whose noses should be avoided at all costs because you know exactly where they have been.

Anything clean and healthy is not to be sniffed at as far as Fido and his pals are concerned. Far better to savour the pungent pong of canine excreta at any opportunity and then lick the residue lovingly into their owner's face.

Some dogs, however, are extra special. Like Carrie, who was my best friend for 15 years until I found her frozen body on the back doorstep of our home in Manchester one frosty winter morning. But more of that later.

Carrie was a small sandy mongrel with white markings – probably a whippet cross because she hared across the local park so rapidly that I swear she overtook herself half way across!

She was around two years old when we inherited her from our younger daughter’s best friend, who was moving abroad with her family. We already had a couple of cats and whilst initially Carrie and the moggies treated each other with caution, they quickly became great mates and indeed would often snuggle together in a basket at bedtime.

A few years earlier we had invested a large sum in a pedigree Irish setter puppy and inherited nothing but trouble and stress. Our attempts to house train the beautiful but highly-strung creature were a disaster to the point that visitors had difficulty working out which room was the toilet.

With the the red setter in grave danger of becoming a dead setter at the hands of her furious owners, something clearly had to give. And Beauty of Belhaven duly bounded off with her new owners six weeks later as the entire neighbourhood breathed a huge sigh of relief.

With Carrie it was entirely different. Calm and good natured, she was nothing like as excitable as Beauty. And she never had to ask to go out to do her business – she would squeeze her body though the cat-flap, albeit with some difficulty, and then squeeze back in when she had finished.

When we went out, we’d take her with us virtually everywhere and she adored sitting on the back seat looking out of the rear window. What she saw and how it affected her we had no idea – until one night when she demonstrated a sixth sense that was truly uncanny.

Perhaps once a fortnight my other half and I would have a meal at a casino three or four miles from home – and we’d occasionally take Carrie for the ride. We’d leave her in the car under the supervision of the car-park attendant while we dined and had a quick spin on the roulette table.

Carrie had been to the casino no more than three or four times – and always in the car, her eyes focused on the road behind as we headed towards our destination, and then home a couple of hours later.

One night, we went as a family to a restaurant for a meal, leaving the dog at home with the cats. When we got back, Carrie had disappeared but we weren’t overly concerned. Presumably she’d just gone out for a wee and a wander.

Then the phone rang. ‘‘Hello, this is the Salford Albion Casino,’’ said the voice on the other end.

‘‘Do you have a dog called Carrie?’’ Cue panic – and the thought that something dreadful had happened to the dog. ‘‘Yes, we do,’’ I replied nervously. ‘‘Well, she’s here wandering around. The parking attendant recognised her. We got her name and your number off her name tag.’’

I was flabbergasted. She had obviously gone looking for us, but how on earth had she got there? I mean the casino was several miles away, across at least a couple of main roads including the busy A56. And she could not possibly have followed a scent because she had only been there in the back of a car.

As we drove to the casino to collect Carrie, the only explanation we could come up with was that she had somehow remembered the route, even though she had never been there on foot and therefore could not have picked up a trail. Or could she? Who knows what goes on inside a dog’s brain – and how many extra senses they possess?

It’s 15 years or so since Carrie died that fateful December day. Fifteen years old and suffering from a heart complaint, I guess she had squeezed out through the cat flap during the night to do a wee, and suffered a fatal coronary attack as she tried to get back in.

She went to meet St Bernard at the Furry Gates still carrying the secret of her mysterious trek to the casino that remarkable night. Indeed, to this day I have no explanation how she found her way there.

Carrie gambled with her life i n that bizarre trek to the casino on highly-dangerous roads that night. And with her courageous if unnecessary mission to find us, she won even more of our love. RIP, little one.

Manchester United mews exclusive - twin Spanish targets fear flying fur

I DREAMT last night that I was a lost moggy wandering among the street cats of inner-city Manchester.
I was the only one with a tail.
These guys weren’t Manx cats. They were Manc brats. Street fighters with a bit of Irish in them, like comic legend Korky the Kat.
They spent most of the dream  singing Mewchester United songs dedicated to their troll model, Catty from Cork. I think he's the sourpuss-in-boots that all Mew-nited fans idolise. The one that humans call  Roy Keane.
The only subject the dream cats wanted to miaow about was furball.
I heard so much of it that the pun cushion that used to be my brain is under threat from a cat’s chorus of chants about Alex Fur-gone's son, or whatever his name is.
Personally, I prefer to remember the days when Denis Paw was top cat around those parts.
Anyway, my street-cat dream (more of a nightmare really) was triggered by a desire to spend more time with my family in the UK.
I have to decide whether to take Tom and Dick, my twin black gatos, with me to England – or try to find a new  home for them here In Spain.

Tom and Dick: Would they settle in England? 

They have no language problems here, but Keith, my cousin's moggy in Manchester, reckons they’ll need to be wary of the locals.
Otherwise they might find themselves missing an ear or an eye. Or walking on anything between one and three legs.
Keith’s local street-cat clan call themselves the Kitty Kitty Gang Bang.  They are certainly no Pads Army - apart, perhaps from scabby tabby  Fur-Gus, who has all his limbs but is perpetually legless.
Keith (who is not a boy, by the way), says things have changed for the worse for local felines over the last 30 years.
She recalls: “In my great-great-great-grandparents’ day, the Manc cat community had some fur-midable role models. I mean, who can forget the likes of Moggy Thatcher and Geoffrey Boycat?’’
These days the only ‘greeting’ the Kitty Gang give to strangers consists of a two-word description of a hair ball.
All I can say is that it sounds very much like 'Fur cough'.
The real nightmare begins if that smattering of local lingo does not have the desired effect. The smattering becomes a battering and the ears and legs start to come off.
That clinches it. The boys are staying in Spain.

A tale of nine cats: My life has gone to the mogs

Molly: Not intelligent enough to have learning difficulties

THEY say that cats have nine lives. Well, my life has nine cats. At least it seems that way as just   about every waif and stray in the neighbourhood queues at my cat flap for its daily food fix.
Officially I have three moggies. The first is Mad Molly, who is small, black, weirdly mis-shapen and has learning difficulties (the description of her previous owner, not mine).
Poor Molly’s not intelligent enough to have learning difficulties. The cat flap’s been there for three years and she still doesn’t know how to use it.
 MOGGY No.2 is Geoffrey (Geoffrey Boycat to give him his full name – apt for an animal that moves as slowly as his cricketing namesake used to score runs for England). My Geoff is a black, long-haired softie of a stray who was probably lost or left by his previous owner a long time ago.
Certainly someone cared for him because he was neutered and healthy when he first started coming to my place.
In fact, it’s possible he still has another home because he sometimes goes missing for a day or two.
MOGGY No.3 is Henry, a young tabby who turned up at my back door last autumn with a hairless, bleeding chest and a mega-miaow.
‘’I suspect he’s been in a fight but I can stitch it up, no problem,’’ said the vet. ‘’I would advise you to have him neutered as soon as possibly, though. Not only will it stop him fighting, it will also help to keep the cat population down and make him more of a house cat.’’
Twenty-four hours later, Henry moved in - neatly stitched, snipped and tucked. When his chest took longer than expected to heal, I took him back to the vet…and a blood test revealed he was FIV-positive, the feline equivalent of HIV.
‘’It’s nothing to worry about,’’ said the vet. ‘’He was almost certainly born with it. It’s quite common and he has a good chance of leading a normal life. Because he has been neutered, he’s highly unlikely to pass the FIV on, even through sharing food bowls with other cats.’’
All of which makes Henry a bit special. After all we’ve been mutually stitched up – him by the vet and me by Henry, who could have saved me a lot of money had he turned up on someone else’s doorstep! (I’m joking, of course).
Add to Molly, Geoffrey and Henry the half-a dozen feral waifs and strays who turn up at various times of the day and night – and the menagerie-a-trois moves into mega-moggy mode. And thereby hangs another tail…the tale of why I prefer cats to dogs.

Henry: I had him stitched up, then he stitched ME up!

Now I’ve written a couple of light-hearted articles in the past about the respective merits and otherwise of each species, so apologies to those who have previously been subjected to what follows.Cats are to me the most mysterious, fascinating and wonderful creatures on earth. Not only can they read your mind, they can also manipulate it to their own advantage. That's the voice of 40 years of cat ownership speaking. Oh, and I didn't own any of my moggies - they owned me.
I was THEIR pet, not the reverse. If it didn't suit them to live in my home, they'd have been off like a flash to appoint some other purr soul as honorary daily food-and-milk supplier. Some of us are cat people, some dog people and some, like myself, care for both. Only we usually have a preference and in my household, moggies have always held the edge. To start with, they allow their owner more independence.
If you're not around for a few days, it doesn't really matter as long as someone is there to feed them.
Leave a dog on its own for two days and you're not only in serious trouble with the animal authorities, the poor mutt will also have moped itself into a candidate for the canine nuthouse.
Then there is the cleanliness issue.
Dogs love to pepper their noses with the ghastliest of savouries left for them by their fellow barkers. The browner and smellier the better for Fido and his pals, and the worse for those of us whose shoes squelch the stink into our rugs and carpets when we get home.
From my experience, there's nothing more frustrating than trying to house-train a puppy. It will pee and poo to order providing you let it out a minimum of 250 times a day.
But pop out yourself for five minutes and you open the door on your return to a mound of doggy dung and a floor awash with a ship-load of urine.
The yelps when Little Poo is left momentarily on its own are bad enough. But they are nothing to the yelps of human anger that boom into the stratosphere when Mr and Mrs Owner discover what poochie was up to while they were out of the room.
Yet to a dog lover, those Close Encounters of the T*rd Kind are all acceptable in exchange for the pure, uncomplicated love you are guaranteed in return for just being there.
Who cares that Fido spends all day rolling in mud, urine, vomit and the faeces of every animal on earth? It only takes a couple of hours to clean him up - and then those luscious licks and doggy hugs make it all worthwhile. Unless, like me, you're already so browned off by those pooper bloopers that you've vowed never to have a dog again.
Cats are a complete contrast. House-trained before they've ever seen a house, all a kitten needs is a litter tray and it will wee and poo into it ad infinitum.
Mind you, removing the hail of stones that hurtle around the house in mini-puss's attempts to bury the residue with its lethal back feet can take twice as long as clearing up after any untrained puppy.
Moggies also need no teaching when it comes to cleaning themselves. And thereby hangs another tale - plus body, head and legs.
Before you know it, puss has licked herself bald and is coughing up a two-ton hair ball. You rush her to the vet thinking she's on her last legs but fear not...they all do it. Unless, like my Molly, the furry one suffers from feline asthma and vomits up nothing but wheeze.

Geoffrey: Does he have another home?

If your cat is a Tom, then you have another problem or three. First and worst is his territory spraying, and the pungent, difficult-to-remove smell it creates.
Then there's his sexual appetite, which he'll inevitably impose on all the local moggettes - accompanied by a cat's chorus loud enough to drown out a 30-piece orchestra. The solution to that one is simple.
Have Tiger Tom snipped in the bud when he's a few months old and the spraying and s****ing will be a thing of the past. If you have a dog, you will of course need to take it for walks.
Unless you are a lazy bitch like one or two of my friends - and end up with a mutt that's even fatter than its owner. In such instances, at least fatso and her pet won't need a pooper scooper to clean up the dog mess, though not that many people seem to bother if the pavements in my locality here in Spain's Costa Blanca  are anything to go by.
People not clearing up the mess left by their dogs in public places is a big problem everywhere. But here's a question for you: If you saw a threatening-looking yob's pit-bull pooing outside your home and he didn't clean up the mess (the yob, not the pitbull), what would you do?
If your answer is 'nothing', score a brownie point for honesty. As for me, I'll stick with my moggies. I just wish they could purr in English.
PS. I have a confession to make. I wrote this article some time ago and the animal personnel at Casa Donna has changed considerably since then.  Watch this space for news of Tom, Dick and Harry,  Feraldine the Throat and the Black and White Mogstrel show. Yes, I feed my pets on Grin-a-lot!