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Dingle balls, also known as dingle berries, thankfully are not our daily bread, else we’d all go fruitcake. But two instances this past week’s a bit much. First, during our walk through the autumnal glory of the Markham arboretum, Pepi indulged in her ritual pee and poo, in that order. Given that she hoovers anything she can*, I’m surprised she doesn’t ingest the occasional long hair more often.

Anyway, after she was done burying an elf, she began darting and squatting, darting and squatting. On closer inspection, I noticed a broken off turd swinging off her chocolate starfish like Tarzan at the end of his vine (“I COMING, JANE!”). Did we ever mention I’m borderline OCD when it comes to such matters? I went to my happy place, a German pop tune from ’82 playing in a loop somewhere.

Naturally, Rudha-an remained functional, retrieving a paper napkin from the car and proceeded to remove that attacking nugget from Pepi’s butt. That’s what we get for having opposable thumbs, I guess. “Oh. I ate another of your hairs. Take care of it, won’t you, Jeeves?”

By the way, not pointing fingers, but I’m bald as a cue-ball.

Later this same week, at oh-dark-whatever, a ruckus. It sounded like furniture crashing. Pepi was in her crate, Jenny and Titan were both on the bed… Even in the fog of sleep I suspected something horrendous, involving crap. Not puke, they do that on the low-low. But Tito has priors when it comes to ingesting and “passing” human hair (“that ain’t no mine..!”). Jenny’s half his age, so perhaps she’ll catch up in time, but there she was brutally awakened on the bed like the rest of us.

The fracas lasted maybe five seconds, then silence. We didn’t speak, it wasn’t necessary to spell out what we already sensed. As Tito dropped butt burritos in the litter box (which Pepi would treat as a buffet if we let her), the worst “knock-knock” joke played out against his arse. “Bad touch! Bad touch!” And Tito went-a-racing with the stranger-danger tethered to his poop chute until escape velocity threw the turd back near the litter box.

Or so we think. That is where Rudha-an’s forensic exploration located the morsel, but there’s no telling where that thing had been. Tito raced from the box to the dinette, down to the floor, through the kitchen, into the bedroom where he bounced against the wall before running across the bed and back to the rear of the Endurance where the litter box is.

Da-da-da..!
Ich liebe dich nicht, do liebst mich nicht
Da-Da-Da..!
Ye gods.

• Heard this morning,during Pepi’s early pee walk: “Pepi stop licking the car!?!”

And here’s a kitten being the dingle ball.