I was deeply engrossed in an Alice Munro short story about an affair that had gone on too long and had begun to sour into a relationship when I heard my husband’s muffled voice, “Oh no! Oh shit!” followed closely by the galloping of our new kitten.

I looked up just as Temujin appeared in the doorway. He stood for a second and gave me a shocked look. “What the…” I mumbled as I stared at the soggy moggy before he disappeared promptly into the courtyard.

“Oh no! Oh shit!” repeated my husband as he shuffled into the room and gave me a horrified stare. He stood still long enough for me to take in the wet splotches darkening the front of his shorts before shuffling off, crab-like, after the cat.

“What the…” I repeated as I followed them out, “What happened? Did you… piss on yourself?”

“No! The cat….”

“What? The cat pissed on you?”

“Noooo! I pissed on the cat!”

“Oh,” was all I could manage, as I absorbed the image of the wet, miserable pair clinging to each other.

Slowly, the story unfolded. It turned out that my poor husband had been staring out the bathroom window while relieving his bladder when, out of nowhere, he heard a massive splash and looked down to find Temujin looking up at him from the toilet bowl. Unfortunately for them both, he was still in mid-stream and Temujin copped an eyeful, retaliated by leaping at the source of the offending stream, which my husband quickly moved to protect and, well, here they were.

I left them to sort out their differences and went to examine the scene of the crime. There was urine splatter everywhere… on the seat, on the wall, on the floor. I dodged some drops that seemed to be dripping from the roof and followed the paw-print splotches back into the courtyard where I found my husband clutching the sodden cat and profusely apologising.

The cat, whose little head still bore a stream of wet fur, was stoically dripping wetness all down my husband’s front.

They looked up at me and their faces shared a mixture of shell-shock and shame.

Wheezing with suppressed mirth, I left to clean up the bathroom and when I got back I found my husband crouched over the tap trying to wash away his stains from the cat’s reluctant head.

Temujin was mewing pitifully and my husband was cooing nonsensically as I went back to the bathroom to fill up the sink with warm water.

Minutes later, with the freshly washed kitten bundled in a fresh towel and my husband bundled in another, we sat on the bed and my husband re-lived the whole traumatic experience in detail, with the occasional mewed interjection from Temujin for emphasis.

It was a nice family moment and I’m happy to report that the boys are now closer than ever; kind of like old army buddies who have lived through horrible events together and come out the other side with their friendship intact.

Our Celebrity Adventures

J&J Shaw

As regular readers of this epistle may know, we have several pets. Sadly, the suicidal fish finally managed to put an end to its existence last month and was buried in the garden - for a while anyway. Until the dogs dugs it up and left it by the back door in case someone wanted a tasty treat during the night.

The sociopathic and deeply evil ginger cat is still in residence, whiling away her days by glaring malevolently at every member of the household and crapping on various much-loved items.

Our two whippets continue to be both endearing and virtually untrainable, which the children find hilarious and Justin finds utterly enraging; I go both ways.

Still, even on the most angst-ridden days they will make me smile when I get home. They hear me come in and jump up on their hind legs to peer through the back door, then, when they see that it’s me, they start pirouetteing in delight. Being whippets they are long legged and graceful and it always reminds me of Beatrix Potter “over the hills and far away she danced with Pigling Bland”.

Like most dog owners in this area, we take them down to Elsternwick park fairly regularly. Occasionally, just for some variety, we take them to other parks around Melbourne and one of these was the scene of our latest effort at making utter arses of ourselves in front of famous people. Both Justin and I have a long and glittering history of selfarsemaking with international celebrities and the like. Justin, who used to have a bit of a thing for red heads, met Nicole Kidman in Sydney many years ago, way before she met the tiny, round shouldered scientology weirdo. She was tall, elegant and porcelain skinned; he was outstandingly drunk. She was gracious, but firmly uninterested; he was smitten and utterly incoherent. Eventually, unable to make an impression any other way, he burped long, loud, hot dog scented beer fumes all over her and lurched off in search of more ale.

A few years later Justin and one of his mates met Richard Stubbs in a pub, Justin, in more or less the same condition he was in when he met Kidman, decided to prove to Stubbs that he was not the only funny man in the room. Stubbs nodded politely for a while and then gave Justin’s friend an autograph that said, quite understandably: “Sorry about your mate… Stubbsy”

Don’t be thinking that Justin carries all the funny celebrity stories though, oh no, he may have burped on Nicole Kidman, but I knocked Kylie Minogue to the ground and sat on her in the middle of Collins St. So there! (Kylie is very very very small; I am built along brick shithouse lines, so when we collided outside a bank back in the 80’s she went down hard and I landed arse-first on top of her. Poor little thing was squished flat and shell shocked, I had to run away very fast to avoid being egged by angry passers-by).

Various similar drunk and uncoordinated encounters with the almost famous and unknown alike culminated in our meeting with Eric Bana while taking the dogs out for a walk last year.

Eric has a dog, its breed escapes me at the moment - I think it’s a poodle, or something poodle-related, (full size of course, not a toy, because the guy who played Chopper Read and Hoot from BlackHawk Down would never own a toy poodle).

So Eric was walking his fluffy-but-masculine dog in the same park as us, and probably regretting it, because, for us, walking the dogs around the park usually means the dogs sprinting off immediately upon arrival, confusing the hell out of all the Labradors, chasing each other, trying to eat each other’s heads, and completely ignoring Justin roaring at them.

Naturally, Eric, being a famous person minding his own business, was bound to meet us under the most appropriate and tasteful circumstances, and well, if he’s going to walk around in a suburb where there are fuckwits like us and our fuckwitted dogs, then tough titties. At least neither we, nor our dogs, are Richard Wilkins. I hope he kept that in mind as he drove home later. He should also keep in mind that if he’s going to do that famous-person-minding-own-business thing, he could be a little bit less, you know, nice about it? I mean, this guy gets to make a movie about his own car, he’s so big. Surely he’s supposed to be followed around by a fleet of black 4WDs and a bunch of hard-looking motherfuckers with two-way radios, firearm bulges under their arms and a nasty predilection for punching people in the throat?

So anyway, we’re walking along (kids fighting, mostly with each other, Justin muttering something like “howfuckinghardisittorememberafuckingplasticbagnexttimeyoucanpickitupinyourhandsforfuckssake”, me yelling at kids/dogs/Justin), and the dogs decide, as only whippets can, hey guess what guess what I dunno what I can’t remember I think you bit me on the head one too many times well stop running away what was the great idea you had I can’t remember hey wait a second that’s right it’d be really fun to stop biting each other on the back of the head for a while and go chase that big black kinda fluffy thing ‘cause I think it smells like a dog so if it is a dog it’ll have an arse so we can sniff its arse and it can sniff our arses and we can sniff its arse and then we can chase it for a while and it won’t be able to get away from us and it’ll be funny if it’s big and tough and it’ll try to chase us but we’re so fast hey hang on a second we just ran past it how do we stop again oh there we go it’s over there now let’s go…

Which is all fun and kinda cute and very dog-like. Except that Owen, who’s been a eunuch since the age of six months, has recently been having a disturbing run of extremely misplaced doggy urges, and had been trying to mount, well, pretty much everything.

So, I was a little ahead of Justin (who was still muttering sulphurically about something or other) and ran into Eric (not in a squishing Kylie Minogue way, just in a nice normal “hi, isn't it a lovely day” way) and his dog at the water fountain.

I got excited for a moment, thinking that Justin and I had finally turned a corner, being entirely sober and not burping or vomiting. But, no, excitement too soon, one again.

As I turned to casually call my beloved over to meet the famous bloke I beheld Justin, charging towards us, red in the face and screaming “get the fuck away from it, you filthy perverted little fucker, go on FUCK OFF”.

Eric lost his friendly smile and edged away from me, but Justin went charging past us and grabbed at Owen, who was trying very hard to mount Eric’s (male) dog.

So, yes, we met Eric Bana via the tender devices of Owen And His Amazing Thrusting Lipstick, accompanied by Justin And His Very Deep Voice Roaring At Owen, with backing vocals by All Our Kids Howling With Laughter And Yelling Out “EWWWWW GROSS!!!”.

Once he worked out that Justin wasn’t screaming at him, Eric seemed to take all this a little better than his dog did; although it wasn’t Eric that was getting mounted by one whippet with another whippet’s head wedged in between his arse and the first whippet’s thrusting lipstick (oh, how we later marvelled at our good luck, that Owen had only decided to assault the famous person’s dog, and not the famous person’s leg).

Eric’s dog, on the other hand, decided pretty early on that he really didn’t want to star in some canine brother-sister re-enactment of the dungeon scene from Pulp Fiction, and bolted.

Thankfully the whippet urge to run will always outdo the standard doggy urge to fuck things, so the chase was on, a galooping, terrified, yelping poodle, and two very excited (one still slightly horny) whippets running rings around it:

Please please please leave me alone I don’t know you and I’m kind of flattered but I’m a boy dog and that sort of thing just isn’t my cup of tea, and don’t you think it’s kind of wrong to be doing that sort of thing with your sister around, fuck ME you’re fast, nonono I didn’t mean that, hey can’t you hear that human yelling I think they want you over there

yeah yeah whatever at least now you’re running although I don’t really call that running but at least it’s something to chase and hey watch this I can run faster than you and frighten the shit out of you while I’m doing it and chase you even further away from that very good looking human you’re out with and no I can’t hear a bloody thing is someone yelling about something hey fluffy dog look gotcha!! gotcha again!! hey where are you going? you can’t get away from us y’know, look, gotcha again…

Eventually we had them by the collars, Eric’s dog had regained some composure and was attached like a limpet to his leg and Eric was able to make his excuses and run for home, leaving us with yet another memory of yet another famous person we’d always really wanted to meet who would never want anything to do with us ever again.

And I’m positive the next time I saw him he had a fleet of 4WDs and some hard looking motherfuckers following him around.

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