Charity

INSIGHT September


There’s a scratching noise behind me. I look down and there’s Maxwell Wolf, asleep by my feet. He’s getting older is Maxwell. Still man’s best friend, but older. A friend told me yesterday that seagulls can’t, how you might say, break wind. He said that if you ever wanted to really aggravate a seagull – like, why would you want to? – all you’ve got to do is feed it an Alka Seltzer wrapped up in a bit of bread. I don’t know why I thought of that, except to say that Maxwell has no seagull in him. He’s quite… expressive.

The scratching continues. I look behind me and it’s Tracy. She’s scurrying around, picking up this, putting down that, generally being busy.

Maxwell raises his weary head, looks round and sighs. I’m getting to know this look of Maxwell’s by now. Back in the day it was just me and him, one man and his dog. Each of us thinking that the other one was the one man. He was quite pleased when Jane Wife came along and made it three, but then as each successive new thing arrived, he became more and more resigned to his post. A child. Some fish. Another dog. Another child. A cat. The cat’s kittens. Next door’s cats. A seagull. Each time a new thing arrived, the sigh got longer and more audible, the air of resignation heavier. A couple of weeks ago Tracy arrived and Maxwell didn’t even stir.

Tracy is the newest member of the family. Judy Doe’s birthday present. (Life was so much easier when she just wanted Motorbiking Barbie or whatever. Tracy was, admittedly , cheaper. But the running costs…). She was very sweet when we got her, a baby. Cute and small and brown, she scurried around hamsterishly. We bought her a pink Perspex cage that had three levels and a wheel. We built her a ‘run’, took her out in her ball and gave her peanuts. We even bought her a hamster ‘toilet’. As hamsters go, Tracy had landed on her feet. Paws.

A week after she came, it was time to clean out her cage. Judy went to put Trace in her ball and… it wasn’t so much a scream as one of those silent exclamations where the mouth opens and nothing comes out. We looked at her and… eventually….
“There are things in there, moving”.
“What do you mean, ‘things’?”
“Come here. I don’t know what it is, but there are small things in Tracy’s cage. They’re pink, like worms.”
I looked at Jane and Jane looked at me. Small things? Pink? Worms? Joy. She’s been here a week and already she’s introduced some rodent infestation. We went over to the cage, looked in, and… Tracy, who was only a baby when we got her last week, had had babies. Tiny little things, like small, pink worms.

Maxwell came over and had a look in the cage. He turned away and sighed in a way a seagull can only dream about.
Jane looked at me. “I thought she was a baby… How do hamsters… Do you think she was pregnant when we got her?”

I looked at Jane. What was there to say? Nothing that would win me any prizes.