Females in charge?

Yesterday we had to call around at Y-san's house over near the beach to pick something up. She has five King Charles' Spaniels around the place, you might say that she has a house full of dogs. They are already barking when you park in the lane.

I really love visiting friends who have lots of dogs. All that fuss they make when you arrive, leaping up to welcome you and generally being naughty and jumping around on the furniture. With five of them you aren't going to be short of a good licking, that's for sure. And it takes them about ten minutes at least to settle down, work out the 'pecking order' in terms of socialising with the 'new humans' etc.

Later we we sitting around her kitchen table drinking coffee and eating persimmons and I had to laugh because all three of us had a dog each sitting on our knee. Y-san had the 'dominant female' on her lap, Edera had one of the three mutts that had taken a fancy to her and I had a 'softie' called Kei-chan - I think! Not sure how the other two landed on their respective laps but I hauled my dog up for a cuddle, I wasn't going to be left there dogless in a doggy world. But I had to laugh to see the three dogs all there sitting so seriously looking at us and each other, like three gnomes or dwarfs. Interesting how naturally this situation develops, a bit like with toddlers but usually with little kids it takes them an hour or two to get used to my beard, warts and wild staring eyes. Dogs will sit on any monster's lap, they don't discriminate, if you smell OK they love you. If only our lives were so simple.

I was a bit cautious about touching fur, a bit soon, touch is the most powerful of the senses when it comes to raw emotion, about 95% of your love flows out through your fingers. I've been giving our 'outdoor cat' Mew-kun a perfunctory stroke when I take his bowl outside in the morning but nothing too 'clinchy' or 'serious', nobody would want to linger much over his dirty matted coat anyway, grooming is not his 'thing'. But it was OK, I didn't get weepy.

Y-san's 'alpha female' growled at the two luckless and lapless canines left on the floor from time to time, just to remind them to keep their distance. And so the conversation got around to which was the fiercest, males of females. With dogs the females usually let a male enjoy the illusion of being alpha dog - I think - but just insofar as it counts for keeping the pack together. For 'Big Cats' it is usually the female that is boss, I wouldn't want to poke a stick in a tigress's ear.

Humans - now THAT'S an interesting one eh? Of course the rest of the coven were convinced that the female of the species is deadlier than the male, no doubts lurking in any corner of their jam-making and kimono-buying minds on THAT score; well they would say that wouldn't they! I feel an old joke about the Irish staging the Eurovision Song Contest year after year coming on here. Do they still have that on TV by the way? - another good reason to live in Japan.