Moving Ben and raining socks

C moved house this weekend. One of the things we had to do was take the Van to the 'old' house and collect Ben and his cage. Ben has to stay in a cage when he is in the house on his own otherwise he eats it - the house I mean. Seriously. Doors and door frames are fair game in his eyes. C bought the biggest cage available and Ben (a greyhound) has loads of room to move around.

I have to explain that C used to live down a long street of Victorian terraces built when cars hadn't been invented. It is narrow. Today the street is lined with cars and the gap to drive down is extremely tight. C drove down fine but when she tried to turn around the van at the bottom of the street, the van got stuck. It was pouring with rain and I had to start knocking on doors to try to find out whose car we were almost wedged against. Then ask them to please move their precious car. Twice! Claire finally managed to move the van but there was no-where to park it so she had to park up the hill, 100 houses away from hers. We then had to walk back to the house, catch the dog and attempt to get Ben into a secure room. Not easy. We then had to get the cage down the stairs. Unfortunately there was a huge pile of boxes of books and other heavy stuff in the way so we had to lift the cage over our heads to get it past these.

Ben likes socks. C kept her socks in a basket under her bed. Ben's cage is next to the bed. Ben likes to poke his long narrow nose through the mesh of the cage and steal socks. He is very picky and choses fluffy socks. He then lays on them. He doesn't eat socks! Ben also has a fluffy blanket in the bottom of his cage, he used to eat blankets but he seems to like this one and it is still in one piece.

So, we lift the cage over our heads and past the boxes, to the top of the stairs and then socks start flying around, landing on our heads, followed by a fluffy (hairy and a bit smelly) blanket. I laughed. C laughed. We got a bit hysterical. Couldn't move, socks everywhere, Ben starts fretting and worry about him eating his way out through the door forced us to get a grip. We got the cage downstairs, outside, down the concrete steps, onto the pavement. Cars parked everywhere including the pavement. We had to carry the blooming cage up the middle of the road, giggling like crazy, water dripping off us. We managed to lift the cage into the van and secure it so it wouldn't move around. Went back to collect Ben. Who is by now having a breakdown and has escaped the secure room but is still contained inside the house. Rather innocently I asked where his lead was. He ate it last week.

Picture two hysterical females, absolutely soaked to the skin, water dripping off our heads. One maniac greyhound, one van 100 houses away, no lead. I ran up the road, Ben ran after me with C hanging on to his collar hoping he was following me and not escaping. We did get him into the van and into his cage, he even stopped for a wee on the way up the street.

Next day we went to the pet shop and bought a new lead. It is a long chain with a chunky nylon hand grip. He likes it. Unfortunately someone forgot to use it and take Ben out for a walk. He peed on the brand new carpet.