Now that the days are much cooler, I’ve gotten into the habit of taking my morning coffee outside with the dogs. My favourite thing to do is to sit on one of the low walls in the garden, sip my coffee, and pet all the dogs.

One morning a few weeks ago, Streaka didn’t feel inclined to come and visit with me and so, knowing that she is an old lady and due some sort of consideration for that, I set my coffee down on the wall and went to see her on her dog bed. (She says I should call it a “pallet” because that’s what Cleopatra reclined on but that’s a story for another day.)

Streaka got her scritches and her pets and a wee neck massage but after a while, my back got tired from bending over her “pallet” (because, after all, I too am an old lady and due some sort of consideration for that) and so I returned to my wall and my coffee.

Well, I returned to my wall. My coffee was gone. Oh, the mug was there but it was empty.

There were three possible suspects in the coffee theft: Tighe, Dayton, and Rogie. Tighe was immediately cleared of the crime as, being the old man that he is, he had gone back to bed after a couple of kisses and a pet. I knew Rogie liked coffee but only cold…apparently, his tongue is very sensitive to heat. (He claims that avoiding hot beverages preserves his superior palate but I’m not sure about that…how far can you trust the palate of a dog who thinks chowing down on bark mulch is fine dining?)

One kiss from Dayton and I had my culprit. He may have looked innocent but there was no way of hiding his coffee breath.

At this point in the story, his theft of my coffee was “cute”. Of course, the following morning, it wasn’t quite as cute. He didn’t even wait for me to set my mug down before sticking his nose into it.

Please! I need my coffee too!

The third day, I decided that I really didn’t want to share my coffee with Dayton and so I fixed him his own. Rather than using a mug, I poured some cream and then some coffee into a small bowl and carried both it and my coffee into the garden. In total, it was roughly half a cup of coffee…which was basically the amount that Dayton was stealing from me.

It didn’t take Dayton long to figure out that the bowl of coffee was his, all his. He happily lapped up the bowl’s contents and then, being the fastidious boy that he his, licked up all of his spillage. (A whippet drinking coffee from a shallow bowl is not a sight for the faint-hearted, or those with OCD issues, for that matter.)

Perhaps every second or third day, I’d let Dayton have some coffee. (I didn’t want to set him up for caffeine addiction, you know.) On Friday morning, I headed out to the garden with two coffees: one for me and one for Dayton. Dids immediately jumped up and put his feet on my arm in an attempt to start drinking from his bowl. About half of his coffee went straight down the sleeve of my housecoat…needless to say, I was not pleased.

Still, time softened the memory of that mishap and so this morning, I poured two coffees and headed out to the garden. Dayton didn’t jump this time but he had eyes only for his bowl. He drank it down in one go and then looked longingly at my mug. He backed up from my spot on the wall, spun around in circles a few times, and looked pointedly at my mug again.

Yeah, the spinning around in circles should have been my cue that he’d had enough but Dayton has always known just how to work the crowd. I poured him a shade more coffee from my mug.

After petting Streaka, I noticed a small piece of paper sticking out of Dayton’s apartment. Apparently, he’s been making his Christmas list. Number one on his list is an espresso machine, specifically an Illy machine: http://tinyurl.com/ykcaglo

Maybe I’ll get him a Starbuck’s card…

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 10:23 am and is filed under gone to the dogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.