Watch your Language, Human!

Dear Humans,

We all love you. By writing this we do not want to demean you. But there are times when you get onto our nerves…

For my safety and rather survival reasons its best that I keep my owners’ name and my name a secret.

For my human owners I just speak “dog” not “human”. But mind you I can speak ten different languages other than dog- there is cat, bomb, food (we don’t talk to food silly, but that’s our special food language when we communicate with my other counterparts), some two to three Human languages that I have picked up while my stay with my Human family and rest I won’t disclose them. Im under a secret keeping contract you see. We are allowed to talk Human only under special conditions.

So you think we just eat, sleep and poop all day and yes chew on those silly little rubber toys you have brought for us. I mean, really? You think we are in love with the toys? Let me bust some stupid misconceptions you have. We do not love rubber toys. No they aren’t tasty just because they smell or have a chicken flavoured perfume stuck to it. We just chew on it just so that you don’t feel bad that we aren’t accepting your gift.

Right since we popped out of our Mother Dog’s tummy we were under training. In your Human term it’s called “the high school”. So like all your human babies we just didn’t cry and sleep and puked and pooped. We were taught how to understand you humans, your thinking and your behaviour. How are we supposed to behave in front of Humans and how in front of other animals and how to get our work done and how still act dog and still do our regular Animal jobs.

I have a serious confession to make. My friends and I and I think all other dog friends find the so called “dog training lessons” lame! Sit, stay, roll, and shake hand. What are we robot dogs? There is definitely more to us than that. You should see us jive and shake the booty at our after-hours dog parties. That would put your salsa and hip hop to shame. I can very well do dog-fu something what you humans call Kun fu. But we dogs don’t end up doing it as we don’t like to show off and don’t want humans to feel all threatened.  

Now imagine how irritating it is for us when you talk to us in the baby language. Sometimes it’s nice. But that is just at some times when we need a bit of pampering. Will you talk to a Human adult in a coochie-coo language? And then you start inventing some new words and talk gibberish thinking it’s all cute. But it isn’t! Picture this im explaining to my co-ordinate a serious issue about how to abort the flea arrival area over my wireless phone (yes we too use our own mobile phones and you thought just humans were capable of inventing it, we don’t show off remember!) and my pretty big master in his early sixties calls out, “Where is my little smooshie pie?” Imagine my embarrassment! The other day I heard him calling out, “Now where is my little sweetie pie?” and I happily went in galloping to greet him and imagine my disappointment when I realized he was calling out to his wife!

You humans seriously need to alter the tone in your voice and be sure who would you like to answer your baby call your wife or your dog. Here is a tip, talk to us in a special voice. That wouldn’t confuse us. And talk to us like you would talk to your friend and not to a baby. You can talk to our little puppies like that. For us you can use your humble voice. We would like that.

You should thank us dogs for not being like cats. We hate them because we disapprove of their ideologies. I have never heard a cat being a human’s best friend. They are selfish and evil little creatures who just live to eat and sleep. You feed them milk and some fish and they would stick at your leg until you feed them that. The day you stop feeding them off they go to some other family! You should be grateful for not understanding cat language but I do and believe me they have awful things to talk about their masters. They crib like a bunch of sore oldies complaining of how cold or how hot the milk was served or how their bed wasn’t made and how a bit more of salt was required in the fish.

See it’s said that ‘dogs are humans’ best friends’ but being a best friend is a two way thing right? Are you, Human the best friend to your dog? We love going on long walks with you, we love snuggling up to you and sleeping in between your feet, we love it when you put your head on our backs and pretend to sleep. We love you even more when you make sure we get well soon when we are sick. We really do feel sorry for you when you hug us and bury your face into our back and sob. We aren’t allowed to talk Human but we really do feel sorry for you and feel like biting the person who made you cry real bad where it would hurt him the most!  

Some of my dog friends feel very sad for not being treated like family. They feel ignored rather than feeling loved. For all those Humans who are extra busy it would be nice if you could switch off the TV and talk to us instead after a long day at work. It would also be nice for a change if you could put aside your mobile phones and just come and sit beside us rather than talking to some person on the other side. Don’t forget we too switch off our phones when the humans are around! What I like more about small Human kids is they tend to understand us dogs much better than you adults do. It’s nice of them to read out a story to us, to share their food with us, to kiss and hug us. It’s really nice to have Humans who treat us like their family rather than bickering over whose turn is it to take us for a walk or rather than hiring some dog walker.

We want you to be there to see us grow. We don’t need a huge house or expensive parlour treatments just to pamper us. We just need a little bit more of your time and attention and a little bit more of your love. See you never know one day we might just talk to you in Human. So just stay with us :) 

  

  

The Outsider

Dear fellow Human,

Its night time. All lights switched off. You are requested to switch on to your night mode for better visualizing. The one where we see all things in green how you would see the frame from a video cam in night mode. That’s the way how he would see too!  

I think he crept sometime in the middle of the night. He sneaked in quietly. Without making a sound. He was quite hungry. The kitchen was cleaned and closed. We had finished our dinner and returned the remaining food to the fridge. He didn’t find a thing. His little hands couldn’t break open the fridge door or twist the round dabba’s lid in which we stored the khaau.

But then something beckoned him. He caught the aroma. Mangoes. Mmmm… The aroma was strong and pulled him closer to them. But to his dismay the mangoes laid covered into a netted basket. The net was an easy material to go through and reach the mangoes. He got to work. And then he got his tiny hands onto a mango. Finally!

He dug his teeth into the soft ripe mango and ate a side voraciously. Phew! What a relief! He had got something much better than he had imagined. He climbed down and stretched on the floor and sighed satisfactorily.

Breaking into the house, check. Filling up a grumbling hungry tummy, check. Exploring the house, will begin now. And to locate them and communicate. The major task!

His team had been tipped about the two fellows living in the house. The old nosey pigeon had seen both the new creatures and had informed them. And now he got a whiff of their scent too. He activated his high power night mode eyesight and tuned his ears well. There! Now he could see all clear and well. He could hear someone snore. He made his way swiftly into the direction of the sounds he had just heard.

He came across the first door. My Dad was asleep. Snoring. He nodded disapprovingly. Was he fooled? But that wasn’t possible. His high decibel ears won’t despise him. He decided to get in and check the room just for assurance. Nothing. He found nothing.

And then he heard something again. This time he heard two sounds. Someone snoring. This time not my Dad. But someone else. No it wasn’t my Mum or me (I don’t snore please). And another sound of someone digging into something rough. His ears alerted him. He started moving into the sounds’ direction.

There! He spotted them. He could see them clearly now. Both were of the same colour as his. Grey. And both were a bit smaller in size than him. Wow! He exclaimed. He’d never thought that he would see a specie so similar to him. He had just heard about them or seen their pictures in his training program. But in those pictures the creatures, their apparent cousins were brown or white. Not grey! This was his first task. Alone. And he surely wanted to succeed. He had been warned. To keep out of the humans’ way and not to be sighted but enjoy the stay and gorge into the humans’ food. But his mission would be a secret. Explore and communicate and get more information about them.

He approached the funny room they were supposedly living in. He sniggered. He thought it’s a relatively a bigger cage. Wonder if they ever knew how it is to be in open and in wild. His leader had specifically ordered him to keep his thoughts to himself. “Just talk to them about them and question them about them and keep your thoughts to yourself.” He started moving towards the cage. Err..  Room.

He stood before the digging specie and stared at him. The one who was engrossed in digging stopped and stared back at the visitor he had just spotted. The digger woke up the other one who was sleeping. The two looked at the outsider quite astonished. They started discussing Was he real? And how did he come in? Did he live here?  Not according to them. Was he going to hurt them? Or take away their food? But he didn’t seem as someone who would hurt.

The outsider broke his silence and squeaked, “Hi, Im Rocket the city mouse. Don’t be scared of me. I have just come here to visit you two and to get to know about your clan.” He pulled out his hand and put it across the windowed wall to shake hands with them. The two insiders stared at him and then exchanged looks with each other. The first one stretched his tiny arm and shook hands with Rocket and spoke. “Hi Im Bison the hamster and he is my brother Picasso the hamster. We had different names when we were babies but then these humans named us something cooler. So we decided to adopt these new names.”

That night the three sat facing each other with a wall running between them and shared all that they had known and all that they hadn’t know. Rocket forgot about his mission in between and started telling them about his team of Mouse and their work- to find out about different fellow species that had moved to the city and shared the space with them. He told them that he was a Researcher Mouse. Bison and Picasso told Rocket about the old wise Khujli the Guinea Pig and how he told them stories about their burrowing family.

They forgot for how many hours they had been talking when Rocket heard some bell ringing. Bison told him this bell rang every day at this hour and Papa Human walked out of his room to answer it. Rocket bid a goodbye and told them he would visit them the next morning. He shouldn’t be seen by anybody else other than these two. No human should know he was here.  Saying a quick bye Rocket rocketed out of the room and found a dark corner and hid. He sent a message to his Research team saying he had begun his task. As he closed his eyes to sleep into this new corner he thought this mission isn’t too bad. The humans might never know of me sneaking in and I would get to know more of these two Hamsters over my stay. He didn’t realize when he slept off.

Bison and Picasso too slept off snuggled into their corner tired and amazed with the amount of new information they had just garnered. Picasso exclaimed, “There seems to be a whole new and exciting world out of this room. Wonder how it’d be.” Bison said, “Yes but remember what the old wise Khujli had said. He had said don’t try to break open and escape whatsoever. You will regret. And I think we should follow his warning.”

Papa Human, my Dad spotted the half eaten mango and said, “There is a mouse in the house! And we have to get him!”

And all I could say was, “Hope the city mouse doesn’t teach any tapori ways to my naïve  Hamsters.” But little did I know what had happened the last night and what was in store for the hamsters and me…