We adopted Morris after he’d been abandoned in a park at the age of two. The shelter named him Kai but it didn’t suit him. An old soul (read: curmudgeon) who tried to pull us into old-school boozers, and who demanded routine and treated walks as a favour to us, Morris was perfect.
Incorrigibly lazy and happiest on the sofa, preferably on top of us, his only real motivation was food. Perhaps he knew hunger in that park, and vowed never to meet it again. Among the countless petty thefts from unattended plates were some truly audacious schemes. There was the sandwich stolen right out of a stranger’s hand. The birthday cake polished off, tinfoil and all, before its intended recipient tasted a single bite. The multiple raw baking potatoes eaten, this last crime caught on video or we’d never have believed it.
His Brink’s-Mat moment came after a 12-person barbecue. Under cover of darkness, he ate the bones of 24 chicken drumsticks and a large rack of ribs, and paid for it with a three-day sentence at the animal hospital, where successive X-rays showed the agonising progression through his digestive system of 100 needle-sharp bone shards. Luckily, he didn’t seem to be in too much pain.
He survived and learned nothing: a couple of years later he dispensed with a roast chicken so thoroughly that we wondered if it had even existed. The meat had obviously gone, but so had the entire carcass. The metal platter it had been resting on was clean and shining. The foil had somehow been replaced neatly on top of the platter. Forensic examination of the scene showed only a slightly misaligned chair – used for clambering up – and a single smear of grease.
Even when grey streaked his fur and he lost his hearing, we avoided talking about the end. This small staffie contained multitudes, and it was impossible to imagine life without him and his warmth, his groans, his hilariously selfish ways. Perhaps we’d assumed he’d go out in a blaze of feasting glory but, when he developed dementia, the terrible responsibility of deciding when to say goodbye fell to us.
On his last day, like all those before it, he ate like there was no tomorrow. Of course, he didn’t know there wouldn’t be. If he had, I think he would have been satisfied with his haul, which included posh sausages, Marmite toast and his unlikely favourite, satsumas. “Where’s Morris?” we always used to say, meaning, “Oh god, what’s he stealing now?” Now it’s taken on new meaning: the disbelief that he’s gone and won’t ever be back. But we still have the stories. We’re still so much richer for the 12 years our funny little Morris gave us.
