Twala Mornings
The lions roar at first light and as if the sound breaks the seal of the night sky the first glimmer of daylight spills silver along the horizon. Pink next, ripening like a peach to gold as the sun stretches out behind the hills. The dogs stir and snuffle, the reassurance of Horatio beside me as always, little Rex at my feet, the solid weight of Simon the cat against my hip.
Tinkerbelle is snoring in her basket, even after all these years of love and safety waking her suddenly will make her shriek in fear. She’s a smooth soft shape in her bed, metamorphosized from the emaciated ghost who would crawl on her stomach to her food bowl when no one was looking, shaking with terror. Her wounds from abuse and neglect have healed over, the fur growing back in bursts of bright white – we call these her stars, a testament to the ability of dogs to rise above the most dreadful adversity and shine their empathetic, soul-healing light upon our lives.
Tinkerbelle, lover of naps, snacks and swimming
Pinky is in the next bed, her paws and eyebrows moving in endless involuntary twitches, a consequence of the distemper that almost killed her along with pneumonia and an insidious tick-borne disease that continues to hibernate like a sleeping assassin in her bone marrow, kept in check with daily medication. Good nutrition, the best veterinary care and the knowledge that she is safe and loved has transformed her into an endearing mischief maker, irresistible and exuberant .
We don’t change rescued dogs’ names unless they are truly dreadful, so we have 3-legged Cheetah Boy with his neat grey goatee and his bright eyes, and calm and wise Cheetah Girl who is my mealtime companion, accepting small edible acknowledgments of appreciation for her soothing and constant presence. She sleeps curled around her companion, Van Pelt, the little ginger cat who appeared in my garden one day and chose to spend his life providing comfortable and companionship to this ragtag family of elderly and disabled dogs.
Cheetah Girl and Van Pelt
Both Cheetahs are awake and alert, watching me with quiet attention but waiting for my feet to swing out of bed before they get up. Wren is standing with her front paws on the bed, tail swinging vigorously like a fitness instructor trying to motivate a slothful cardio client. She is the puppy I adopted as my 13th dog when I had just had the conversation with my husband, Vin, that there was absolutely no room for more dogs in my house. I found Wren tied to a tree in the sun, dehydrated, malnourished and shrieking with fear, and from the moment I scooped her up and looked at her face instantly trusting against my shoulder, I knew we were starting a journey together.
Wren, always close.
The silver fox, Zebediah, is barking on the couch. A cheerful fool who is not only the only one of our dogs to ever be bitten by a snake, but who doubled down on his notoriety with a Mozambican spitting cobra bite directly over his heart followed by bites from a furious puff adder to both his ears after he swung it gleefully around his very small head. He’s good to go from the second he wakes up, running on the spot with the simultaneous need to bark and pee.
Gentle and anxious Ranger, whose heart is enlarged, has a stretcher bed in the living room, positioned so he can see the frenetic side striped jackals trotting back and forth in the garden in anticipation of breakfast biscuits. If he can’t see them, he won’t sleep – he will spend all night trembling and growling at the French doors to track their progress. An ankle nip when he first arrived left a psychological scar far bigger than the actual wound and has fuelled by his outrage at the injustice of being bullied by hairy hooligans a third of his size.
Yoda also sleeps on a couch. There are 3 couches in the living room, and I never get to sit on any of them because George and Audrey, (the cats who are friends with Ziggy, the genet who sleeps in the guest bedroom) guard the third couch with gimlet eyed, sharp clawed, tail twitching menace. I don’t know how Yoda moved into my house – it is reserved for old dogs who need special care and extra love, and Yoda is not particularly old or interested in any sort of relationship with me. He was just on the couch one day, and basically never got off. He is however a ferocious protector of the household, a nifty sharp toothed ninja around anyone wearing gumboots, no doubt the result of a past trauma.
To get out of the house everyone must pass bow-legged Granny on her bed in the passage, where she lies as sharp eyed and malevolently focused as a sniper, with her equally irascible daughter, furry Fox, grinning savagely beside her.
Granny, the toothless terror,
Granny is one of the founding members of the Waggley Tail club, retired at Twala when her arthritis made it too difficult to walk to Doggy Tuesday each week - she has no teeth, her tongue lolls from the side of her mouth and this together with her twinkling eyes makes her look as jolly and harmless as her name. But Granny’s bark is absolutely a hundred times worse than her bite – it is at a decibel perfectly pitched to trigger maximum fear and chaos amongst the other dogs, and sears through the household, sharp and shrill as a police whistle and just as effective. The Bark is frequently followed by a savage gumming of whichever dog has the misfortune to be at the back of the scrambling panic-stricken pack fleeing down the hall, delivered with such ferocity and terrifying sound effects that her victims are absolutely convinced that they have suffered real bodily harm when actually they’re just festooned in strings of translucent spit as though they’ve just flailed their way through a giant spiderweb. Fox jabs and snaps on the perimeter, Basil Brush tail aloft with glee, a shadow boxing sidekick to her malevolent mum. How I make it into the kitchen for urgently needed coffee each morning without breaking a limb in the melee is a mystery.
I open the door for Spike, the invincible little dog whose back legs were paralysed when she was hit by a car. She comes zooming up the garden, propelled on her front legs and her powerful shoulder muscles, her bandaged back legs trailing on the wet grass. She won't sleep inside so she has a selection of shelters in the garden as well as a wardrobe of coats and jackets that would make Carrie Bradshaw proud.
Morning coffee companions, Spike and Kadiki
Kadiki, our beloved lioness, lives adjacent to the house. She is waiting for me in the cool morning light, the sun rising behind her as she pads silently to the fence, pulling her blanket along behind her like a superhero on a break, settling down in a spot worn smooth by her golden weight over the years.
I drink my coffee on the old metal chair that I found rusting picturesquely in the garden when I moved in, padded now with bright cushions chewed around the edges by the jackals who indulge in mindless vandalism as the mood takes them. I listen and watch as the nocturnal creatures return to the shadows of burrows and boughs: the spotted eagle owls who have raised their chicks in my garden for a decade ruffle their feathers, sink their heads into the pillows of their chests and disappear against the rough bark of the ancient msasa trees, the same trees our free roaming thick tailed bushbabies are snoozing in with their tails curled over their heads. The night-time trill of the ghost white tree frogs has been replaced with birdsong as bright as the sunlight and a frenetic gaggle of guinea fowl clatter past like pompous grey suited commuters late for the bus, slipping side eyes at Kadiki as she washes a giant paw with her huge pink tongue. She’s had a few members of this feathery and eternally foolish family for dinner, catching them with one super powered swipe of a paw as they fly low and heavy across her habitat.
All the dogs have had their morning milk and the long list of medications carefully distributed into colour coordinated egg cups every evening to save time in the morning have been dispensed to patients with varying degrees of cooperation. The jackals have wolfed down their breakfast biscuits with the tooth flashing, hackle raising, squabbling intensity that they bring to even the most mundane activity and headed back to their lair under the old water tank.
Ronnie the jackal
Ziggy is ensconced in the depths of an eviscerated couch cushion, and Kadiki is asleep, belly up, under the sprawling shade of the mountain acacia tree, untroubled by the industrious hum of the hive of bees who live in its massive trunk.
It is 6.30am, the staff are chattering their way down the road from the village, the cows bellow for breakfast above the barking of dogs and the guttural mechanical roar of the generators, and our Twala day begins.
