The Mystery of the Shrill Cries

Time for a ‘fun’ post. I am in the mood for it. So, here goes…. :)

Every day, when our doggie walks into the house to settle down for his nap in the evening – which is normally after I have returned home from office - our neighbours hear shrill cries emerging from our house. As you may have guessed, they originate from me. The joy that I experience in inviting our doggie into the house and watching him snuggle into his bed comfortably is what is manifested in the form of shrill cries. The shrill cries get shriller when followed by our doggie’s endeavour to jump on to me and bite my head off, at times. When the ritual of me screaming my vocal chords hoarse began, our doggie was, I think, utterly confused and dazed by my behaviour (he conveniently forgot that sometimes the noise was deafening only when he tried to ‘behead’ me). If I were to interpret his expressions, they would be a combination of one or more of the following: “Errr….I hope you are all right?” / “I just don’t believe it!” / “You drunk?” / “Do I hear you right?” / “Can I help you in anyway?” / “Err….is it something to do with me?”. (I can go on, but I guess I ought to know where to draw the line as no one including our doggie is going to stand up and tell me what the expression really means). So, the ritual continued unabated for a few days till the people at home began to warn me about the repercussions of the same.

Despite the warnings I continued with my habits (old habits die hard) but there was a sudden change in the environment from unexpected quarters. Our doggie who gave me his undivided attention until then - more with a view of solving ‘the mystery of the shrill cries’ a la timothy or buster (Enid Blyton’s dogs from The Famous Five and The Five Find-Outers respectively) than out of sheer kindness for a person who would otherwise have had no audience whatsoever - suddenly seemed to get bored with all the hallabullah. Of late, he listens in for a while and then quickly runs up to his bed and falls asleep (or maybe pretends to be asleep, I’d imagine). He gives me a few customary glances and rolls his eyes around the room while still managing to keep a watch over me before running off. I can only attempt to read between the glances and conclude that he perhaps has decided that The Mystery of the Shrill Cries is an unsolvable one and his beauty sleep was anyway more important than shrill cries (or fries or whatever) that anyway wanted a change in tune among many other things like being done away with per se, or maybe he got on to think that he would rather not be associated with me and the shrill cries for his own protection from the neighbourhood early-sleepers. Whatever…..woof…woof. BARK. STOP.

Well, the bottom-line news for the reader is that the ritual has now been reduced to a few short notes (An abrupt break in the communication between doggie and yours truly is not advisable, you see) that I use to indicate that I am glad he is home and safe and getting on with life - which is but mostly a combination of eating, sleeping, chasing cats, squirrels and children and star-gazing that closely resembles the act of introspection. EEEEEEKS (read: short shrill cry)