It’s Saturday and Lizzie’s Mum has come to visit again.
I like Lizzie’s Mum (or Grandma, as she’s known by the kids). For one thing, we’ve bonded in the face of a shared enemy – Cedric the dog.
Cedric HATES Lizzie’s Mum. At the very sight of her, he goes nuts – barking his head off and taking nips at the back of her trousers.
The only person Cedric seems to dislike as much as Lizzie’s Mum is our cleaning lady. That’s totally inexplicable – our cleaning lady is very nice and completely harmless. But it’s at least sort of understandable why our pet canine gets so wound up by Lizzie’s mother. Whenever Cedric growls at her, Grandma growls back, for starters.
And there’s the whole fact that Lizzie’s Mum keeps on saying we should have gotten a pedigree dog, as previously mentioned. Maybe Cedric can actually pick up on comments like this.
I sometimes wonder if Cedric was in fact traumatised by someone who looked like Lizzie’s Mum, in his early life before we adopted him, and that’s why he’s so hostile towards her. In my head, it’s a Norman Bates-like character who dresses up like a granny and goes around growling at dogs for kicks. Perhaps that’s unlikely, but we’ll never know for sure.
Whenever Lizzie is in the room, her mother is as good as gold around the dog, stoically saying ‘I don’t mind’ even as Cedric nips the back of her legs.
The minute Lizzie leaves the room, however, the gloves are off.
‘How about I bring some nice steak for Cedric next time,’ Lizzie’s Mum winks at me. ‘Poisoned steak.’
Or… ‘wouldn’t it be awful if we accidentally left the front door open and Cedric ran out… and got run over? Then I could get you a proper pedigree dog.’
My enemy’s enemy is my friend and all that and it’s hard not to get pulled into these delirious schemes.
Besides, it’s all in jest. Isn’t it? Lizzie’s mother doesn’t really intend to murder our dog. Does she? To be honest, with Lizzie’s Mum it’s hard to be sure.
Anyway – as I keep on telling her – if anything happened to Cedric, she’d be the prime suspect. Wouldn’t she? She’d never get away with it!
One time, I tell a friend about these conversations.
‘If your mother-in-law did ever decide to murder your dog,’ he replies, thoughtfully, ‘her best bet would be to frame your cats. They’ve got the motive. And then no one would be able to trace the crime back to her!’
Our cats? Committing murder (supposedly)? Yes, they have got the motive, there’s no arguing. They dislike Cedric as much as anyone. But, beyond issues of practicality, there’s one problem with the idea.
‘I like the cats,’ I say.
P. D. Clifton 
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