I woke to find a suspiciously absent Scharnelle as she usually demands her breakfast biscuit long before I am ready to roll out of bed. This morning, however, there was no panting in my ear to wake me. I wandered around the house until I found her sitting on my chair with one of my shoes in her mouth.

It wasn’t the shoe as much as the fact it was my Italian leather pink kitten heel slingback that dangled from the huge jaws of a mastiff. She hadn’t had time to do more than drool inside of it but I knew in my heart it would never be the same. Once a Bordeaux gets hold of something it rarely is. Since Scharnelle is well past the age of chewing personal items unless exacting revenge I decided that she needed reminding just who was top dog in our house.

One thing Scharnelle dislikes is the consumer idiocy of society, she frequently shows her displeasure by either farting, snorting or chewing the remote during television commercials. So after careful thought I realised that the best punishment was to subject her to the indignity of the Santa photo. Now do not misunderstand, Scharnelle is not against presents in fact she expects them on a nearly daily basis but to sit next to a ridiculous man in a red suit is enough to make any respectable mastiff belch in annoyance.

So we went to the pet store and she belched, attempted to run away, knocked over their fake Christmas tree and terrified a small foxy. A bull in a china shop had nothing on us, still the picture was taken and dutifully posted to the world. From now on I might put my shoes back in the cupboard.

Merry Christmas from me and from her.